Carrier route record

AACLT→ATL

American Airlines · Charlotte to Atlanta

Flights: 311
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on CLT to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 311 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,611 at 87.2% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on CLT to ATL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 71 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 302 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.57%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.3%

Every carrier on CLT to ATL, 4,409 flights

These figures cover 311 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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

American against every carrier on CLT to ATL

American flew 311 of the 4,409 flights on CLT to ATL, about 7% of it. Its 70.5% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.2% to American at 70.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 87.2% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 78.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,310 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on CLT to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,611	87.2%	80 min	1.34%	A
Envoy Airthin sample	177	84.2%	49 min	3.39%	B−
PSA Airlines	1,310	78.2%	66 min	2.37%	B
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	311	70.5%	78 min	2.57%	C

Delta leads PSA by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 13 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1 flights—
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm6 flights—
2pm–5pm1 flights—
5pm–8pm74 flights60.3%
8pm–5am228 flights73.2%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.3% on time, against 73.2% for the 8pm–5am 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 228 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on CLT to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 202575 flights57.5%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights65.6%
Jan–Mar 202692 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202654 flights81.5%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.5% on time across 311 flights.

American on CLT to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 57.5%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 78 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 53.3%. 25 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 6,940 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
4%

54% 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 6,940 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 6,940 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 2,413 of the 6,940 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.57%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 226 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.7% on time across 309 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 311 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.

What to do with this

Booking American on CLT to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 311 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 70.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 302 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures