Carrier route record
AACLT→PNS
American Airlines · Charlotte to Pensacola
- Flights
- 632
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to PNS lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 632 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's CLT to PNS record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 622 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on CLT to PNS, 1,933 flights
These figures cover 632 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
American against every carrier on CLT to PNS
American flew 632 of the 1,933 flights on CLT to PNS, about 33% of it. Its 83.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.3% to PSA at 73.7%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 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 |
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 21 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–8am—
- 8am–11am331 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm87 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm80 flights88.8%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights88.5%
- 8pm–5am82 flights67.9%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 88.8% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 67.9%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 331 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to PNS through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 87.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.7%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 7,896 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
- 37%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 2%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 7,896 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 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 7,896 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 2,942 of the 7,896 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.2% on time across 632 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 632 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on CLT to PNS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 632 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 83.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 622 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to PNS, every carrier
- American on PNS to CLT, the return leg
- Envoy Air on CLT to PNS76.9%
- PSA Airlines on CLT to PNS73.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.