Carrier route record
AACLT→TYS
American Airlines · Charlotte to Knoxville
- Flights
- 193
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to TYS sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 193 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on CLT to TYS runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 192 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.0%
Every carrier on CLT to TYS, 866 flights
These figures cover 193 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% 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
American against every carrier on CLT to TYS
American flew 193 of the 866 flights on CLT to TYS, about 22% of it. Its 70.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 88.5% to PSA at 68.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 | 26 | 88.5% | 36 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 73.2% | 93 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 193 | 70.8% | 74 min | 0.52% | C+ |
| PSA Airlines | 606 | 68.7% | 78 min | 3.30% | C− |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 193 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am18 flights—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm116 flights64.3%
- 8pm–5am58 flights74.1%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.3% on time, against 74.1% for the 8pm–5am 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 116 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to TYS through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025131 flights69.2%
- Oct–Dec 202562 flights74.2%
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.8% on time across 193 flights.
Split by quarter, American on CLT to TYS logged 131 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 62 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 70.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 64.5%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 4,157 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,157 reported delay minutes.
44% 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 4,157 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 are rare at 0.52%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.1% 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.
At 176 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 71.9% on time across 193 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 193 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on CLT to TYS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 193 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 70.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 192 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.