Route reliability record
CLT→CMH
Charlotte to Columbus
- Flights
- 2,029
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 347 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,029 CLT to CMH flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 799 at 80.1% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to CMH: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.2%, against 78.0% 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
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,992 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
80.1% on time across 799 flights
These figures cover 2,029 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 CMH
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 68 | 95.6% | 30 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 799 | 80.1% | 63 min | 1.75% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,162 | 75.5% | 71 min | 1.98% | B |
No carrier stands out. PSA tops the table at 80.1%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Columbus
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → CMHCharlotte to Columbus | PSA Airlines | 78.7% | 80.1% | 1.75% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → CMHCharlotte to Columbus | American Airlines | 74.0% | 75.5% | 1.98% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
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 24 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am56 flights94.6%
- 8am–11am287 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm371 flights85.0%
- 2pm–5pm407 flights75.0%
- 5pm–8pm343 flights76.4%
- 8pm–5am565 flights70.8%
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 94.6% of the time, against 70.8% for the overnight window. That is 24 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 565 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.
July is the worst month at 70.4% on time, 15 points below September, the best at 85.5%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 195 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.6%. 14 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 56% of the 30,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 30,000 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 29,631 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 94.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 347 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 84.6% on time across 2,028 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,029 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 CMH 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 85.5% on time and July 70.4%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,992 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to CMH questions
How often is CLT to CMH delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.0% of the 2,029 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to CMH?
PSA Airlines leads at 80.1% on time across 799 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 75.5%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to CMH?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.8%, 24 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 CMH?
July is the weakest month at 70.4% on time, compared with 85.5% 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
- CMH to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to CMH80.1%
- American Airlines on CLT to CMH75.5%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.1%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record95.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.1%
- American Airlines on-time record75.5%
- 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 CMH and CMH 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.