Route reliability record
CLT→CVG
Charlotte to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 1,798
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 335 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,798 CLT to CVG flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 815 at 72.7% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to CVG: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.2%, against 72.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,758 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
72.7% on time across 815 flights
These figures cover 1,798 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 CVG
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 | 59 | 87.0% | 62 min | 8.47% | A− |
| PSA Airlines | 815 | 72.7% | 72 min | 1.84% | C |
| American Airlines | 924 | 71.0% | 73 min | 1.95% | C |
No carrier stands out. PSA tops the table at 72.7%, 2 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 Cincinnati
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 → CVGCharlotte to Cincinnati | PSA Airlines | 71.4% | 72.7% | 1.84% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → CVGCharlotte to Cincinnati | American Airlines | 69.6% | 71.0% | 1.95% | 8am–11am, 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 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am41 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am283 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm347 flights71.0%
- 2pm–5pm240 flights71.2%
- 5pm–8pm349 flights70.2%
- 8pm–5am538 flights65.9%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.2% of the time, against 65.9% 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 538 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
June is the worst month at 60.8% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 83.2%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.1%. 17 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 57% of the 35,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 35,079 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 90.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
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. 10.4% 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 335 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 80.0% on time across 1,797 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,798 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 CVG 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 83.2% on time and June 60.8%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,758 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to CVG questions
How often is CLT to CVG delayed?
Roughly 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 27.7% of the 1,798 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to CVG?
PSA Airlines leads at 72.7% on time across 815 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 71.0%, a gap of 2 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 CVG?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.9%, 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 June delays on CLT to CVG?
June is the weakest month at 60.8% on time, compared with 83.2% in September. Across the year that is 22 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
- CVG to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to CVG72.7%
- American Airlines on CLT to CVG71.0%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to CVG, a related route72.2%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record72.7%
- American Airlines on-time record71.0%
- 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 CVG and CVG 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.