Route reliability record
CLT→JFK
Charlotte to New York
- Flights
- 2,002
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 542 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,002 CLT to JFK flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to JFK: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.5%, against 71.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,937 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
70.5% on time across 1,863 flights
These figures cover 2,002 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 JFK
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 139 | 83.6% | 53 min | 2.16% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,863 | 70.5% | 77 min | 2.95% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to JFK
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to New York
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → EWRCharlotte to Newark | United Airlines | 80.0% | 82.0% | 2.49% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → LGACharlotte to New York | Republic Airways | 75.9% | 79.8% | 4.88% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. CLT → EWRCharlotte to Newark | Republic Airways | 75.1% | 81.0% | 7.34% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 4. CLT → HPNCharlotte to White Plains | PSA Airlines | 70.8% | 73.1% | 3.12% | 5am–8am, Wed | OH 5431 07:23 |
| 5. CLT → EWRCharlotte to Newark | American Airlines | 69.0% | 71.5% | 3.50% | 8am–11am, Wed | AA 2794 20:33 |
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am492 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm501 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm255 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm435 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am319 flights60.1%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.1% on time, against 86.3% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 501 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to JFK 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 JFK, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 60.1%, a wide gap of 26.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am86.3%
- 11am–2pm73.5%
- 2–5pm70.7%
- 5–8pm60.5%
- 8pm–5am60.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
December is the weak month at 63.6% on time, against 80.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 218 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.4%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 42,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 42,253 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 86.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
11.6% 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.
The 542 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.3% on time across 1,998 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,002 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 JFK after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,937 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to JFK questions
How often is CLT to JFK 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 28.5% of the 2,002 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to JFK compared with the rest of the country?
71.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 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 JFK?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.1%, 26 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 December delays on CLT to JFK?
December is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 80.3% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- JFK to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on CLT to JFK83.6%
- American Airlines on CLT to JFK70.5%
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.6%
- American Airlines on-time record70.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CLT to JFK and JFK 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.