Route reliability record
CLT→SFO
Charlotte to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,492
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,296 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 1,492 CLT to SFO flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly CLT to SFO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.3%, against 65.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 117 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,473 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
65.6% on time across 1,492 flights
These figures cover 1,492 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 SFO
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 | 1,492 | 65.6% | 58 min | 1.21% | 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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am316 flights77.4%
- 11am–2pm247 flights71.0%
- 2pm–5pm133 flights67.7%
- 5pm–8pm556 flights61.5%
- 8pm–5am240 flights52.7%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.7% on time, against 77.4% for the 8am–11am 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 556 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to SFO 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 SFO, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 77.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 52.7%, a wide gap of 24.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am77.4%
- 11am–2pm71.0%
- 2–5pm67.7%
- 5–8pm61.5%
- 8pm–5am52.7%
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 48 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.
June is the worst month at 34.8% on time, 48 points below March, the best at 82.9%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.6%, a spread of 23 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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 29,287 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 77.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.3% 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 2,296 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 83.6% on time across 1,492 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,492 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 SFO 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. March runs 82.9% on time and June 34.8%, a swing of 48 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,473 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to SFO questions
How often is CLT to SFO 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 34.4% of the 1,492 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to SFO compared with the rest of the country?
65.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 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 SFO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 77.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.7%, 25 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 June delays on CLT to SFO?
June is the weakest month at 34.8% on time, compared with 82.9% in March. Across the year that is 48 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
- SFO to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- American Airlines on-time record65.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CLT to SFO and SFO 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.