Carrier route record
AACLE→CLT
American Airlines · Cleveland to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,407
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLE to CLT lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,407 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's CLE to CLT record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,387 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.9%
Every carrier on CLE to CLT, 1,780 flights
These figures cover 1,407 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on CLE to CLT
American flew 1,407 of the 1,780 flights on CLE to CLT, most of the route. Its 82.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 85.0% to Envoy at 20.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 60 | 85.0% | 106 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,407 | 82.2% | 100 min | 1.35% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 303 | 69.6% | 113 min | 6.27% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 10 | 20.0% | 44 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on CLE to CLT
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am334 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am432 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm343 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm152 flights77.0%
- 5pm–8pm146 flights68.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.7% of the time, against 68.3% for the evening window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 432 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLE to CLT through the year
January is the weak month at 70.7% on time, against 92.2% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.3%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on CLE to CLT runs when it is late
American on CLE to CLT often beats the schedule: 565 of 1,387 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 247 late arrivals split 66 under half an hour, 81 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 100 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early565 flights40.7%
- Within 15 min575 flights41.5%
- 15–29 min late66 flights4.8%
- 30–59 min late81 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late56 flights4.0%
- 2+ hours late44 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,387 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
50 of 269 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 28 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on CLE to CLT
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 February 2026, 42 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 February 2026 | 42 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 October 2025 | 30 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 October 2025 | 21 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 May 2026 | 8 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 August 2026 | 8 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 to one. The split is drawn from 24,669 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 430 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.8% on time across 1,406 flights, 8 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,407 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on CLE to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.2% on time and January 70.7%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,387 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to CLE, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on CLE to CLT69.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.