Route reliability record
CLT→ROC
Charlotte to Rochester
- Flights
- 998
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 573 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 998 CLT to ROC flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to ROC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 78.9%, against 74.8% 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
74.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 978 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
72.0% on time across 823 flights
These figures cover 998 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 ROC
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 6 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 169 | 87.5% | 45 min | 0.59% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 823 | 72.0% | 83 min | 1.94% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Rochester
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 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → BUFCharlotte to Buffalo | American Airlines | 70.6% | 72.0% | 1.93% | 8am–11am, Wed (route) | AA 1203 11:01 |
| 2. CLT → ROCCharlotte to Rochester | American Airlines | 70.6% | 72.0% | 1.94% | 11am–2pm, 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 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–8am—
- 8am–11am258 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm85 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm291 flights72.8%
- 5pm–8pm95 flights73.6%
- 8pm–5am269 flights65.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.3% of the time, against 65.5% for the overnight 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 291 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 64.9% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 83.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.2%. 10 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 57% of the 20,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,504 reported delay minutes.
57% 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 20,000 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.
Cancellations sit at 1.70% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
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. 10.5% 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.
The 573 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 81.7% on time across 998 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. 998 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 ROC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 998 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 74.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 978 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to ROC questions
How often is CLT to ROC delayed?
About 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 25.2% of the 998 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to ROC compared with the rest of the country?
74.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to ROC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.5%, 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 ROC?
July is the weakest month at 64.9% on time, compared with 83.0% in September. Across the year that is 18 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
- ROC to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to ROC87.5%
- American Airlines on CLT to ROC72.0%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to ROC, a related route74.2%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record87.5%
- American Airlines on-time record72.0%
- 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 ROC and ROC 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.