Carrier route record
AACLT→DCA
American Airlines · Charlotte to Washington
- Flights
- 2,384
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 89%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,384 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, 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
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,313 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.7%
Every carrier on CLT to DCA, 2,684 flights
These figures cover 2,384 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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
American against every carrier on CLT to DCA
American flew 2,384 of the 2,684 flights on CLT to DCA, most of the route. Its 67.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 72.0% to American at 67.2%. 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 | 300 | 72.0% | 81 min | 1.00% | C |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,384 | 67.2% | 68 min | 2.64% | C |
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am61 flights65.0%
- 8am–11am648 flights77.3%
- 11am–2pm201 flights62.8%
- 2pm–5pm406 flights59.8%
- 5pm–8pm370 flights61.2%
- 8pm–5am698 flights66.5%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 77.3% of the time, against 59.8% 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 698 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to DCA through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 79.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.5%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 51,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% 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 51,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 51,298 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 77.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.64%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% 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 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 80.0% on time across 2,382 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 2,384 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 November 59.4%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 2,313 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 DCA72.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.