Route reliability record
CLT→CRW
Charlotte to Charleston
- Flights
- 1,158
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 221 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,158 CLT to CRW flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to CRW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.9% of the time and Saturday flights 83.0%, against 75.6% 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
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,112 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
75.6% on time across 1,158 flights
These figures cover 1,158 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 CRW
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 | 1,158 | 75.6% | 64 min | 3.54% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to CRW
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.
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 15 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–8am—
- 8am–11am363 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm33 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm241 flights71.5%
- 5pm–8pm180 flights68.5%
- 8pm–5am341 flights72.5%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.9% of the time, against 68.5% for the evening window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 82.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. November was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.7%. 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 53% of the 17,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
53% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 17,200 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.54%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.2% 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 221 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.4% on time across 1,158 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,158 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 CRW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.54% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,112 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to CRW questions
How often is CLT to CRW 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 24.4% of the 1,158 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to CRW compared with the rest of the country?
75.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to CRW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.5%, 15 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 March delays on CLT to CRW?
March is the weakest month at 67.0% on time, compared with 82.6% in October. Across the year that is 16 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
- CRW to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to CRW, a related route62.0%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record75.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CLT to CRW and CRW 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.