Route reliability record
CLT→PIT
Charlotte to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 1,932
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 366 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,932 CLT to PIT flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to PIT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.8%, against 77.1% 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
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,900 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
77.8% on time across 1,773 flights
These figures cover 1,932 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 PIT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,773 | 77.8% | 63 min | 1.24% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 159 | 69.3% | 58 min | 5.66% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to PIT
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.
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 19 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–8am104 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am256 flights88.8%
- 11am–2pm400 flights83.2%
- 2pm–5pm307 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm400 flights74.6%
- 8pm–5am465 flights70.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.8% of the time, against 69.6% for the afternoon window. That is 19 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 465 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 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 71.2% on time, 12 points below November, the best at 83.2%. 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 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.0%. 16 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 56% of the 27,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 27,325 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 9,378 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.60% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.2% 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.
At 366 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.9% on time across 1,933 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,932 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 PIT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 83.2% on time and July 71.2%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,900 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to PIT questions
How often is CLT to PIT delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.9% of the 1,932 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to PIT compared with the rest of the country?
77.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to PIT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 69.6%, 19 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 PIT?
July is the weakest month at 71.2% on time, compared with 83.2% in November. 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
- PIT to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on CLT to PIT77.8%
- PSA Airlines on CLT to PIT69.3%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to PIT, a related route74.9%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record77.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record69.3%
- 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 PIT and PIT 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.