Route reliability record
CLT→DAY
Charlotte to Dayton
- Flights
- 1,398
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 370 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,398 CLT to DAY flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to DAY: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.6%, against 72.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 51 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,377 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
72.2% on time across 1,398 flights
These figures cover 1,398 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to DAY
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 | 1,398 | 72.2% | 90 min | 1.43% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to DAY
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.
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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 37 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am130 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm218 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm339 flights76.3%
- 5pm–8pm451 flights68.0%
- 8pm–5am260 flights54.7%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.7% on time, against 91.3% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 451 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to DAY by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CLT to DAY, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 54.7%, a wide gap of 36.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am91.3%
- 11am–2pm83.9%
- 2–5pm76.3%
- 5–8pm68.0%
- 8pm–5am54.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 53.5% on time, 32 points below October, the best at 85.4%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.5%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 35,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 34,638 reported delay minutes.
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 370 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 82.3% on time across 1,398 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,398 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 DAY 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 85.4% on time and July 53.5%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,377 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to DAY questions
How often is CLT to DAY 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 27.8% of the 1,398 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CLT to DAY compared with the rest of the country?
72.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 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 DAY?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.7%, 37 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 DAY?
July is the weakest month at 53.5% on time, compared with 85.4% in October. Across the year that is 32 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
- DAY to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- ORD to DAY, a related route66.2%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record72.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CLT to DAY and DAY 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.