Route reliability record
CLT→CLE
Charlotte to Cleveland
- Flights
- 1,780
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 430 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,780 CLT to CLE flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to CLE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.2%, against 73.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,740 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.02%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
73.8% on time across 1,406 flights
These figures cover 1,780 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CLE
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 60 | 75.9% | 87 min | 3.33% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 304 | 74.0% | 66 min | 5.92% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,406 | 73.8% | 66 min | 1.14% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 10 | 30.0% | 63 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Cleveland
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am113 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am267 flights83.0%
- 11am–2pm286 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm317 flights71.2%
- 5pm–8pm196 flights68.2%
- 8pm–5am601 flights66.3%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 66.3% for the overnight window. That is 27 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 601 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to CLE 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 CLE, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 66.3%, a wide gap of 27.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.7%
- 8–11am83.0%
- 11am–2pm79.2%
- 2–5pm71.2%
- 5–8pm68.2%
- 8pm–5am66.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
July is the worst month at 61.7% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 87.3%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 176 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.3%, a spread of 22 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 30,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 30,379 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 93.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.8% 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 430 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 1,780 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 1,780 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 CLE 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 87.3% on time and July 61.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,740 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to CLE questions
How often is CLT to CLE delayed?
About 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 26.3% of the 1,780 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
73.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 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 CLE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.3%, 27 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 July delays on CLT to CLE?
July is the weakest month at 61.7% on time, compared with 87.3% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- CLE to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to CLE74.0%
- American Airlines on CLT to CLE73.8%
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.8%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record74.0%
- American Airlines on-time record73.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CLT to CLE and CLE 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.