Route reliability record
CLT→ABE
Charlotte to Allentown
- Flights
- 852
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 481 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 852 CLT to ABE flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to ABE: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.1% of the time and Thursday flights 81.7%, against 77.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 823 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
77.8% on time across 852 flights
These figures cover 852 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to ABE
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 852 | 77.8% | 62 min | 3.29% | B− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Allentown
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → AVPCharlotte to Avoca | PSA Airlines | 82.6% | 83.7% | 1.26% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → PHLCharlotte to Philadelphia | American Airlines | 77.7% | 79.6% | 2.41% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. CLT → ABECharlotte to Allentown | PSA Airlines | 75.2% | 77.8% | 3.29% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
| 4. CLT → PHLCharlotte to Philadelphia | Frontier Airlines | 63.0% | 65.3% | 3.49% | 8am–11am, Tue | F9 1384 15:49 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 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–8am—
- 8am–11am151 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm130 flights89.1%
- 2pm–5pm166 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm48 flights62.5%
- 8pm–5am357 flights73.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.5% on time, against 89.1% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 357 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 63.0% on time, 27 points below October, the best at 90.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. September was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.8%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 11,000 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,357 reported delay minutes.
50% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 3.29%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 481 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.7% on time across 852 flights, 9 points above 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 852 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ABE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.29% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 823 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to ABE questions
How often is CLT to ABE delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.2% of the 852 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to ABE compared with the rest of the country?
77.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to ABE?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 89.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.5%, 27 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on CLT to ABE?
July is the weakest month at 63.0% on time, compared with 90.2% in October. Across the year that is 27 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ABE to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- CLT to LGA, a related route72.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record77.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CLT to ABE and ABE to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.