Route reliability record
CLT→SEA
Charlotte to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,302
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,279 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,302 CLT to SEA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly CLT to SEA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.1%, against 67.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,289 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
67.5% on time across 1,302 flights
These figures cover 1,302 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to SEA
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 | 1,302 | 67.5% | 62 min | 1.00% | C |
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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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am78 flights85.9%
- 8am–11am362 flights75.8%
- 11am–2pm24 flights—
- 2pm–5pm366 flights60.3%
- 5pm–8pm382 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am90 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 85.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 382 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to SEA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CLT to SEA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.6%, a wide gap of 30.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.9%
- 8–11am75.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm60.3%
- 5–8pm64.4%
- 8pm–5am55.6%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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 51.1% on time, against 86.7% in September. 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 152 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 62.2%, a spread of 12 points.
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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 25,881 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,976 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,279 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.3% on time across 1,302 flights, 20 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 20 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,302 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 SEA 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. September runs 86.7% on time and December 51.1%, a swing of 36 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,289 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to SEA questions
How often is CLT to SEA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.5% of the 1,302 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to SEA compared with the rest of the country?
67.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 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 SEA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.6%, 30 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 SEA?
December is the weakest month at 51.1% on time, compared with 86.7% in September. Across the year that is 36 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
- SEA to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.0%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- American Airlines on-time record67.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. CLT to SEA and SEA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.