Carrier route record
AACLT→DCA
American Airlines · Charlotte to Washington
- Flights
- 2,444
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 91%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to DCA draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,444 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on CLT to DCA runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 104 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,367 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
67.5%
Every carrier on CLT to DCA, 2,682 flights
These figures cover 2,444 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on CLT to DCA
American flew 2,444 of the 2,682 flights on CLT to DCA, most of the route. Its 66.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 72.9% to American at 66.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlinesthin sample | 238 | 72.9% | 72 min | 0.42% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,444 | 66.9% | 69 min | 2.78% | C |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am71 flights68.6%
- 8am–11am640 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm197 flights62.0%
- 2pm–5pm462 flights58.6%
- 5pm–8pm373 flights63.2%
- 8pm–5am701 flights66.3%
Scale runs 50% to 80%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 76.9% of the time, against 58.6% for the afternoon window. That is 18 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 701 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 22 points below May, the best at 79.7%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.7%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on CLT to DCA runs when it is late
The 783 late arrivals split 278 under half an hour, 242 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 263 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early488 flights20.6%
- Within 15 min1,096 flights46.3%
- 15–29 min late278 flights11.7%
- 30–59 min late242 flights10.2%
- 1–2 hours late148 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late115 flights4.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,367 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
96 of 622 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 257 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for American on CLT to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 August 2026, 12 hours 26 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 August 2026 | 12 hours 26 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 19 June 2026 | 11 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 June 2026 | 11 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 10 hours 23 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 July 2026 | 8 hours 29 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 54,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 54,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 54,213 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 18,000 minutes out of 54,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.78%, against 1.89% 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 costs
11.1% 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 331 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 79.8% on time across 2,443 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,444 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on CLT to DCA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 79.7% on time and July 58.2%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,367 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to DCA, every carrier
- American on DCA to CLT, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on CLT to DCA72.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.