Carrier route record
AACLT→AVL
American Airlines · Charlotte to Asheville
- Flights
- 418
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to AVL 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 an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 418 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on CLT to AVL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 411 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on CLT to AVL, 869 flights
These figures cover 418 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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 AVL
American flew 418 of the 869 flights on CLT to AVL, about 48% of it. Its 70.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 90.5% to American at 70.8%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 24 | 90.5% | 30 min | 12.50% | A− |
| PSA Airlines | 427 | 76.3% | 67 min | 3.98% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 418 | 70.8% | 85 min | 1.20% | C |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 418 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm11 flights—
- 2pm–5pm53 flights64.7%
- 5pm–8pm160 flights67.3%
- 8pm–5am190 flights74.2%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 74.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 10 points.
Across the year
American on CLT to AVL through the year
July is the worst month at 51.0% on time, 36 points below January, the best at 86.7%. 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 61 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.8%. 21 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 10,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 10,224 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 3,497 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.48%.
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. 11.9% 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 91 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 80.9% on time across 419 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. 418 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 AVL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 418 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 70.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 411 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to AVL, every carrier
- American on AVL to CLT, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on CLT to AVL76.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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.