Route reliability record
CLT→LIT
Charlotte to Little Rock
- Flights
- 1,210
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 640 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,210 CLT to LIT flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 451 at 83.2% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to LIT: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.5%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,170 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
83.2% on time across 451 flights
These figures cover 1,210 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to LIT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 85.4% | 32 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 451 | 83.2% | 62 min | 4.88% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 629 | 81.2% | 52 min | 1.75% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 76.2% | 134 min | 4.49% | B− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.9% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to LIT
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 Little Rock
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → LITCharlotte to Little Rock | Envoy Air | 79.8% | 81.2% | 1.75% | 11am–2pm, Wed | MQ 3692 20:25 |
| 2. CLT → LITCharlotte to Little Rock | PSA Airlines | 79.1% | 83.2% | 4.88% | 8am–11am, 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 13 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am79 flights77.0%
- 8am–11am156 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm173 flights89.8%
- 2pm–5pm413 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights80.8%
- 8pm–5am337 flights78.5%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 89.8% on time, ahead of 5am–8am at 77.0%. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 413 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,210 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 76.4% on time, against 88.2% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.1%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
53% 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 13,000 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 13,288 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.06%, against 1.81% 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
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 640 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 runs 84.4% on time across 1,209 flights, within 3 points 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 1,210 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 LIT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.06% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,170 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to LIT questions
How often is CLT to LIT delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.3% of the 1,210 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to LIT?
PSA Airlines leads at 83.2% on time across 451 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 81.2%, a gap of 2 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 LIT?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 5am–8am window is the weakest at 77.0%, 13 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 LIT?
December is the weakest month at 76.4% on time, compared with 88.2% in September. Across the year that is 12 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
- LIT to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to LIT83.2%
- Envoy Air on CLT to LIT81.2%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- DFW to LIT, a related route75.8%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record85.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record83.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CLT to LIT and LIT 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.