Route reliability record
CLT→CAK
Charlotte to Akron
- Flights
- 1,421
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 394 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,421 CLT to CAK flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to CAK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.0%, against 71.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 62 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,390 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.04%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
71.1% on time across 1,421 flights
These figures cover 1,421 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to CAK
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 1,421 | 71.1% | 77 min | 2.04% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to CAK
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Akron
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → CLECharlotte to Cleveland | American Airlines | 73.0% | 73.8% | 1.14% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → CAKCharlotte to Akron | PSA Airlines | 69.6% | 71.1% | 2.04% | 5am–8am, Tue | OH 5184 20:32 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am65 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am212 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm123 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm309 flights69.1%
- 5pm–8pm431 flights65.8%
- 8pm–5am281 flights60.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.1% on time, against 90.5% for the 5am–8am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 431 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to CAK by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CLT to CAK, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 60.1%, a wide gap of 30.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.5%
- 8–11am83.1%
- 11am–2pm88.5%
- 2–5pm69.1%
- 5–8pm65.8%
- 8pm–5am60.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 58.0% on time, against 86.6% in October. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 136 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.6%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 31,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 30,900 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.04% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 394 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 79.9% on time across 1,421 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,421 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 CAK 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. October runs 86.6% on time and December 58.0%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,390 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to CAK questions
How often is CLT to CAK delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.9% of the 1,421 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to CAK compared with the rest of the country?
71.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 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 CAK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.1%, 30 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 CAK?
December is the weakest month at 58.0% on time, compared with 86.6% in October. Across the year that is 29 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
- CAK to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- ORD to CAK, a related route63.6%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record71.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. CLT to CAK and CAK to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.