Route reliability record
CLT→SJU
Charlotte to San Juan
- Flights
- 1,077
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,475 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,077 CLT to SJU flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to SJU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.3%, against 76.6% 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
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,060 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
78.6% on time across 988 flights
These figures cover 1,077 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to SJU
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 | 988 | 78.6% | 56 min | 1.32% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 53.5% | 112 min | 3.37% | F− |
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 40 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–8am99 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am226 flights79.0%
- 11am–2pm378 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm206 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am84 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 89.8% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 378 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 58.7% on time, 32 points below September, the best at 90.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 135 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.5%. 23 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 16,084 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.3% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,475 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 85.6% on time across 1,077 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,077 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 SJU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,077 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 76.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,060 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to SJU questions
How often is CLT to SJU 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 23.4% of the 1,077 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to SJU compared with the rest of the country?
76.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to SJU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.0%, 40 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 SJU?
July is the weakest month at 58.7% on time, compared with 90.3% in September. Across the year that is 32 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
- SJU to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- MCO to SJU, a related route73.0%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record78.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record53.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. CLT to SJU and SJU 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.