Carrier route record
AACLT→LGA
American Airlines · Charlotte to New York
- Flights
- 2,767
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 2,767 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on CLT to LGA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 75 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,637 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.5%
Every carrier on CLT to LGA, 4,193 flights
These figures cover 2,767 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on CLT to LGA
American flew 2,767 of the 4,193 flights on CLT to LGA, most of the route. Its 69.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 79.8% to Frontier at 51.6%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 923 | 79.8% | 94 min | 4.88% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 261 | 77.0% | 72 min | 4.98% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,767 | 69.8% | 76 min | 3.79% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 51.6% | 113 min | 9.09% | F− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on CLT to LGA
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am339 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am461 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm610 flights69.5%
- 2pm–5pm570 flights60.3%
- 5pm–8pm403 flights57.5%
- 8pm–5am384 flights64.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.5% on time, against 89.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 610 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to LGA through the year
July is the worst month at 58.7% on time, 25 points below January, the best at 83.8%. 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 268 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 60.2%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on CLT to LGA runs when it is late
The 796 late arrivals split 241 under half an hour, 243 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 312 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early575 flights21.8%
- Within 15 min1,266 flights48.0%
- 15–29 min late241 flights9.1%
- 30–59 min late243 flights9.2%
- 1–2 hours late183 flights6.9%
- 2+ hours late129 flights4.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,637 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
97 of 737 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 156 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for American on CLT to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 February 2026, 13 hours behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as extreme weather.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 February 2026 | 13 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 10 hours 57 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 4 September 2025 | 10 hours 41 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 July 2026 | 9 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 8 hours 47 minutes | Extreme weather |
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 61,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 61,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 60,739 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 20,000 minutes out of 61,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.79%, against 1.89% 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 costs
11.8% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 2,769 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,767 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 LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.79% 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. 2,637 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to LGA, every carrier
- American on LGA to CLT, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CLT to LGA79.8%
- Spirit Airlines on CLT to LGA77.0%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to LGA51.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.