Route reliability record
CLT→LGA
Charlotte to New York
- Flights
- 4,332
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 544 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 4,332 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 964 at 81.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,141 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
81.4% on time across 964 flights
These figures cover 4,332 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 LGA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 81.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,802 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 964 | 81.4% | 81 min | 4.15% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 331 | 79.2% | 72 min | 3.93% | B− |
| American Airlines | 2,802 | 68.9% | 76 min | 3.78% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 235 | 61.8% | 102 min | 4.26% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.2% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am775 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am603 flights81.3%
- 11am–2pm896 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm931 flights65.1%
- 5pm–8pm689 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am438 flights63.4%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 89.4% for the 5am–8am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 931 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 59.4% on time, 23 points below January, the best at 82.4%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 436 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.7%. 10 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 91,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 7%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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 91,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 90,958 reported delay minutes.
33% 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 30,000 minutes out of 91,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.90%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 11.4% 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 544 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 77.2% on time across 4,336 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,332 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 this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 4,141 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to LGA questions
How often is CLT to LGA delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 4,332 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to LGA?
Republic Airways leads at 81.4% on time across 964 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 68.9%, a gap of 13 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to LGA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.1%, 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 LGA?
July is the weakest month at 59.4% on time, compared with 82.4% in January. 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
- LGA to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record81.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record79.2%
- American Airlines on-time record68.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. CLT to LGA and LGA to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.