Route reliability record
CLT→BHM
Charlotte to Birmingham
- Flights
- 1,778
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 350 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 6 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,778 CLT to BHM flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to BHM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.5%, against 83.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,747 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
83.7% on time across 1,114 flights
These figures cover 1,778 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
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to BHM
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 132 | 89.4% | 118 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 1,114 | 83.7% | 64 min | 1.71% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 197 | 82.7% | 81 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 335 | 82.5% | 79 min | 2.99% | B |
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 17 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–8am158 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am295 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm341 flights86.1%
- 2pm–5pm276 flights76.6%
- 5pm–8pm229 flights78.8%
- 8pm–5am479 flights80.2%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 76.6% for the afternoon window. That is 17 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 479 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
December is the weak month at 75.2% on time, against 90.0% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 208 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.5%. 15 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 49% of the 20,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,351 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 sit at 1.63% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 350 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 84.5% on time across 1,779 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,778 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 BHM 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 90.0% on time and December 75.2%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,747 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to BHM questions
How often is CLT to BHM delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.2% of the 1,778 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 BHM compared with the rest of the country?
83.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points 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 BHM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 76.6%, 17 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 December delays on CLT to BHM?
December is the weakest month at 75.2% on time, compared with 90.0% in September. Across the year that is 15 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
- BHM to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on CLT to BHM89.4%
- PSA Airlines on CLT to BHM83.7%
- Envoy Air on CLT to BHM82.7%
- American Airlines on CLT to BHM82.5%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ATL to BHM, a related route84.0%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record89.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record83.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. CLT to BHM and BHM to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed CLT to BHM’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.