Route reliability record
CLT→JFK
Charlotte to New York
- Flights
- 2,032
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,032 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 87.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.2%, against 70.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 74 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,969 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
69.2% on time across 1,837 flights
These figures cover 2,032 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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
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 | 195 | 79.9% | 79 min | 4.62% | B− |
| American Airlines | 1,837 | 69.2% | 80 min | 2.61% | 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.
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 | Republic Airways | 78.6% | 82.4% | 4.57% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
| 2. CLT → LGACharlotte to New York | Republic Airways | 78.0% | 81.4% | 4.15% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. CLT → EWRCharlotte to Newark | United Airlines | 73.8% | 75.9% | 2.76% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. CLT → HPNCharlotte to White Plains | PSA Airlines | 72.3% | 74.4% | 2.76% | 5am–8am, Wed | OH 5431 07:23 |
| 5. CLT → EWRCharlotte to Newark | Spirit Airlines | 70.9% | 76.0% | 6.72% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 30 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–8am—
- 8am–11am462 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm505 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm255 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm523 flights57.7%
- 8pm–5am287 flights58.6%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 87.7% 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 523 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 57.3% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 80.3%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 218 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 47,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 6%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 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 46,708 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 16,000 minutes out of 47,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.81%, against 1.81% 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.2% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.1% on time across 2,028 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,032 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 2.81% 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. 1,969 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 three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.8% of the 2,032 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
70.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 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 87.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.7%, 30 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 JFK?
July is the weakest month at 57.3% on time, compared with 80.3% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 JFK79.9%
- American Airlines on CLT to JFK69.2%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record79.9%
- American Airlines on-time record69.2%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.