Route reliability record
CLT→MSN
Charlotte to Madison
- Flights
- 1,011
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 708 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with 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 1,011 CLT to MSN flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 472 at 81.5% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to MSN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.2%, against 77.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 996 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
81.5% on time across 472 flights
These figures cover 1,011 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 MSN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. PSA Airlines arrives on time 81.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 74.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 539 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 472 | 81.5% | 66 min | 0.85% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 539 | 74.6% | 68 min | 1.30% | C |
PSA leads American by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Madison
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 → MSNCharlotte to Madison | PSA Airlines | 80.8% | 81.5% | 0.85% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 2. CLT → MSNCharlotte to Madison | American Airlines | 73.6% | 74.6% | 1.30% | 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 15 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am161 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm210 flights86.1%
- 2pm–5pm283 flights74.4%
- 5pm–8pm10 flights—
- 8pm–5am347 flights71.5%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.2% of the time, against 71.5% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 347 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 62.1% on time, 29 points below September, the best at 90.9%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.4%. 20 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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
42% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 14,922 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,052 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.9% 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 708 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 84.6% on time across 1,012 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,011 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MSN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,011 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 996 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to MSN questions
How often is CLT to MSN 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 22.2% of the 1,011 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 MSN?
PSA Airlines leads at 81.5% on time across 472 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 74.6%, a gap of 7 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 MSN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 71.5%, 15 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 MSN?
July is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 90.9% in September. Across the year that is 29 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
- MSN to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to MSN81.5%
- American Airlines on CLT to MSN74.6%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to MSN, a related route71.4%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record81.5%
- American Airlines on-time record74.6%
- 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 MSN and MSN 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.