Carrier route record
AACLE→CLT
American Airlines · Cleveland to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,400
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 78%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,400 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,378 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.5%
Every carrier on CLE to CLT, 1,800 flights
These figures cover 1,400 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on CLE to CLT
American flew 1,400 of the 1,800 flights on CLE to CLT, most of the route. Its 82.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 86.2% to Envoy at 28.6%. 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 | 80 | 86.2% | 105 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,400 | 82.7% | 102 min | 1.36% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 313 | 70.2% | 112 min | 6.39% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 7 | 28.6% | 33 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on CLE to CLT
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am342 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am423 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm338 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm171 flights74.6%
- 5pm–8pm126 flights65.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.4% of the time, against 65.9% for the evening window. That is 26 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 423 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.6%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 50%Carrier
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 24,384 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 12,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, 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 74.4% on time across 1,399 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 1,400 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. 1,378 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 CLT70.2%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.