Carrier route record

AACLT→BHM

American Airlines · Charlotte to Birmingham

Flights: 335
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
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 BHM lands a B, 5 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 335 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's CLT to BHM record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 325 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.99%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.8%

Every carrier on CLT to BHM, 1,778 flights

These figures cover 335 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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

American against every carrier on CLT to BHM

American flew 335 of the 1,778 flights on CLT to BHM, about 19% of it. Its 82.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 89.4% to American at 82.5%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on CLT to BHM
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	335	82.5%	79 min	2.99%	B

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 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–8am60 flights91.7%
8am–11am73 flights91.3%
11am–2pm10 flights—
2pm–5pm1 flights—
5pm–8pm54 flights88.5%
8pm–5am137 flights70.7%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 70.7% 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 137 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on CLT to BHM through the year

Jul–Sep 202551 flights70.0%
Oct–Dec 2025153 flights83.7%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights86.8%
Apr–Jun 202670 flights85.5%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 82.5% on time across 335 flights.

American on CLT to BHM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 86.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.0%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 84 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 90.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.6%. 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 51% of the 4,487 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
51%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
4%

51% 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 4,487 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 4,487 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.7% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.99%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 costs

7.7% 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 91.4% on time across 336 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. 335 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 BHM

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.99% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 325 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