Route reliability record
CLT→EYW
Charlotte to Key West
- Flights
- 1,251
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 736 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,251 CLT to EYW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to EYW: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.9%, against 82.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,208 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
79.9% on time across 927 flights
These figures cover 1,251 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to EYW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 324 | 87.8% | 47 min | 1.23% | A |
| American Airlines | 927 | 79.9% | 71 min | 2.70% | B |
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,251 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am363 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm399 flights85.2%
- 2pm–5pm291 flights77.2%
- 5pm–8pm84 flights81.3%
- 8pm–5am114 flights82.6%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 85.2% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 77.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 399 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to EYW 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 EYW, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 85.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 77.2%, a real gap of 8.0 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am82.2%
- 11am–2pm85.2%
- 2–5pm77.2%
- 5–8pm81.3%
- 8pm–5am82.6%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 64.0% on time, 28 points below October, the best at 92.4%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.7%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 14,557 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.32% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The 736 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg runs 82.2% on time across 1,251 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,251 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 EYW 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 92.4% on time and July 64.0%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,208 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to EYW questions
How often is CLT to EYW delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.0% of the 1,251 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to EYW compared with the rest of the country?
82.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 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 EYW?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 77.2%, 8 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 EYW?
July is the weakest month at 64.0% on time, compared with 92.4% in October. Across the year that is 28 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
- EYW to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on CLT to EYW87.8%
- American Airlines on CLT to EYW79.9%
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- ATL to EYW, a related route83.0%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.8%
- American Airlines on-time record79.9%
- 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 EYW and EYW 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.