Route reliability record
CLT→DAB
Charlotte to Daytona Beach
- Flights
- 1,400
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 416 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 1,400 CLT to DAB flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to DAB: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.9%, against 79.6% 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
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,359 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
79.6% on time across 1,136 flights
These figures cover 1,400 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 DAB
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 264 | 79.8% | 61 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 1,136 | 79.6% | 62 min | 3.26% | B− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Daytona Beach
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → DABCharlotte to Daytona Beach | PSA Airlines | 77.0% | 79.6% | 3.26% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → MCOCharlotte to Orlando | Frontier Airlines | 69.9% | 71.9% | 2.72% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 3. CLT → MCOCharlotte to Orlando | American Airlines | 69.2% | 70.4% | 1.66% | 8am–11am, Wed | AA 1879 20:15 |
| 4. CLT → MCOCharlotte to Orlando | Spirit Airlines | 67.7% | 70.5% | 4.03% | 5am–8am, 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 13 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–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am362 flights85.9%
- 11am–2pm326 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm233 flights76.2%
- 5pm–8pm177 flights73.4%
- 8pm–5am292 flights75.1%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.9% of the time, against 73.4% for the evening window. That is 13 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 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 66.7% on time, 21 points below October, the best at 87.2%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.8%. 15 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 50% 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 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 17,098 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 85.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.79%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
6.7% 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 416 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 84.9% on time across 1,399 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,400 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 DAB 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. October runs 87.2% on time and July 66.7%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,359 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to DAB questions
How often is CLT to DAB delayed?
About 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 20.4% of the 1,400 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to DAB compared with the rest of the country?
79.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to DAB?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.4%, 13 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 DAB?
July is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 87.2% in October. Across the year that is 21 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
- DAB to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on CLT to DAB79.8%
- PSA Airlines on CLT to DAB79.6%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ATL to DAB, a related route86.8%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record79.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record79.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CLT to DAB and DAB 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.