Route reliability record
CLT→PNS
Charlotte to Pensacola
- Flights
- 1,933
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 488 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,933 CLT to PNS flights, of which American Airlines flew 632 at 83.3% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to PNS: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.3%, against 77.0% 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
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,891 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
83.3% on time across 632 flights
These figures cover 1,933 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 PNS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 83.3% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 73.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,191 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 632 | 83.3% | 76 min | 1.27% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 110 | 76.9% | 47 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 1,191 | 73.7% | 75 min | 2.18% | C |
American leads PSA by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to PNS
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 Pensacola
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → PNSCharlotte to Pensacola | American Airlines | 82.2% | 83.3% | 1.27% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
| 2. CLT → VPSCharlotte to Valparaiso | American Airlines | 75.4% | 76.2% | 1.04% | 11am–2pm, Sat | AA 2909 15:08 |
| 3. CLT → PNSCharlotte to Pensacola | PSA Airlines | 72.1% | 73.7% | 2.18% | 11am–2pm, Wed | OH 5617 20:15 |
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 17 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am360 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm425 flights85.0%
- 2pm–5pm341 flights76.2%
- 5pm–8pm545 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am262 flights68.1%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 85.0% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 68.1%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 545 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
December is the weak month at 67.6% on time, against 88.3% in October. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.5%. 7 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 50% of the 32,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 32,031 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
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. 9.2% 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.
At 488 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.7% on time across 1,934 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 1,933 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 PNS 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. October runs 88.3% on time and December 67.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,891 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to PNS questions
How often is CLT to PNS 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 23.0% of the 1,933 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 PNS?
American Airlines leads at 83.3% on time across 632 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 73.7%, a gap of 10 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 PNS?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.1%, 17 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 PNS?
December is the weakest month at 67.6% on time, compared with 88.3% in October. Across the year that is 21 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
- PNS to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on CLT to PNS83.3%
- Envoy Air on CLT to PNS76.9%
- PSA Airlines on CLT to PNS73.7%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ATL to PNS, a related route83.7%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record83.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record73.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. CLT to PNS and PNS 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.