Route reliability record
CLT→CLE
Charlotte to Cleveland
- Flights
- 1,799
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,799 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 Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.4%, against 74.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,758 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
74.4% on time across 1,399 flights
These figures cover 1,799 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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
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 | 80 | 78.2% | 99 min | 2.50% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,399 | 74.4% | 72 min | 1.14% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 314 | 74.1% | 65 min | 6.05% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 6 | 16.7% | 52 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 | 73.6% | 74.4% | 1.14% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. CLT → CAKCharlotte to Akron | PSA Airlines | 70.4% | 71.7% | 1.79% | 5am–8am, Wed | OH 5184 19:37 |
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am113 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am269 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm295 flights79.5%
- 2pm–5pm303 flights70.5%
- 5pm–8pm200 flights69.0%
- 8pm–5am619 flights67.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 67.2% 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 619 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 64.2% on time, 23 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.3%. 22 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 59% of the 32,000 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 32,098 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 2.06% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% 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 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 80.5% on time across 1,800 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 1,799 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 64.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,758 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 25.7% of the 1,799 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 CLE compared with the rest of the country?
74.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 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 67.2%, 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 64.2% on time, compared with 87.3% in September. Across the year that is 23 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
- American Airlines on CLT to CLE74.4%
- PSA Airlines on CLT to CLE74.1%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record78.2%
- American Airlines on-time record74.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record74.1%
- 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 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.