Route reliability record
CLT→AUS
Charlotte to Austin
- Flights
- 1,684
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,032 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,684 CLT to AUS flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to AUS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.3%, against 72.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 51 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,649 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
72.5% on time across 1,684 flights
These figures cover 1,684 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 AUS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,684 | 72.5% | 79 min | 1.96% | C |
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 21 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–11am315 flights86.6%
- 11am–2pm246 flights75.4%
- 2pm–5pm260 flights71.0%
- 5pm–8pm408 flights68.2%
- 8pm–5am455 flights66.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.6% of the time, against 66.0% for the overnight window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 455 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
August is the worst month at 62.6% on time, 21 points below September, the best at 83.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 162 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.9%. 25 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 36,000 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
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 35,881 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.0% 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.
The 1,032 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.9% on time across 1,683 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,684 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in AUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 83.5% on time and August 62.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,649 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to AUS questions
How often is CLT to AUS delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.5% of the 1,684 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to AUS compared with the rest of the country?
72.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to AUS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.0%, 21 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 August delays on CLT to AUS?
August is the weakest month at 62.6% on time, compared with 83.5% in September. Across the year that is 21 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
- AUS to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.1%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record72.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. CLT to AUS and AUS to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed CLT to AUS’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.