Route reliability record
CLT→SRQ
Charlotte to Sarasota
- Flights
- 1,427
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 547 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five 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 1,427 CLT to SRQ flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to SRQ: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.7%, against 77.8% 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
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,399 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
75.6% on time across 1,022 flights
These figures cover 1,427 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 SRQ
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 267 | 83.5% | 62 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 138 | 82.4% | 65 min | 1.45% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,022 | 75.6% | 69 min | 2.15% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to SRQ
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Sarasota
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 → TPACharlotte to Tampa | American Airlines | 74.2% | 75.4% | 1.58% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 2915 13:00 |
| 2. CLT → SRQCharlotte to Sarasota | American Airlines | 74.0% | 75.6% | 2.15% | 8am–11am, Wed | AA 2604 19:00 |
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 14 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–8am20 flights—
- 8am–11am289 flights85.9%
- 11am–2pm258 flights82.0%
- 2pm–5pm197 flights78.9%
- 5pm–8pm348 flights71.7%
- 8pm–5am315 flights72.9%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.9% of the time, against 71.7% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 348 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 69.7% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 86.7%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.8%. 15 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 51% of the 21,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 20,932 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 7,523 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.75% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.4% 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 547 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 85.2% on time across 1,426 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,427 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 SRQ 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 July 69.7%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,399 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to SRQ questions
How often is CLT to SRQ delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.2% of the 1,427 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to SRQ compared with the rest of the country?
77.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to SRQ?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.7%, 14 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 SRQ?
July is the weakest month at 69.7% on time, compared with 86.7% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- SRQ to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to SRQ83.5%
- Envoy Air on CLT to SRQ82.4%
- American Airlines on CLT to SRQ75.6%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ATL to SRQ, a related route81.6%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record83.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.4%
- American Airlines on-time record75.6%
- 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 SRQ and SRQ 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.