Route reliability record
CLT→XNA
Charlotte to Bentonville
- Flights
- 1,482
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 754 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,482 CLT to XNA flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 649 at 82.8% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to XNA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.5%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,453 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
82.8% on time across 649 flights
These figures cover 1,482 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 XNA
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 649 | 82.8% | 57 min | 2.47% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 206 | 80.9% | 127 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 627 | 80.8% | 74 min | 1.75% | B |
No carrier stands out. PSA tops the table at 82.8%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to XNA
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 Bentonville
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → XNACharlotte to Bentonville | PSA Airlines | 80.8% | 82.8% | 2.47% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → XNACharlotte to Bentonville | Envoy Air | 79.4% | 80.8% | 1.75% | 8pm–5am, Wed | MQ 4087 18:10 |
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 15 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am344 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm118 flights88.9%
- 2pm–5pm369 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm319 flights80.8%
- 8pm–5am332 flights79.6%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.6% of the time, against 74.7% for the afternoon window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 369 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,482 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
June is the worst month at 75.6% on time, 11 points below November, the best at 86.4%. 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 143 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.7%. 14 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 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
40% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 19,861 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 7,357 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.89% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 754 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 86.3% on time across 1,483 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,482 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 XNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: take the 8am–11am departure, avoid June if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, PSA is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 15 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 1,453 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to XNA questions
How often is CLT to XNA 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 18.3% of the 1,482 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to XNA?
PSA Airlines leads at 82.8% on time across 649 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 80.8%, a gap of 2 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to XNA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.7%, 15 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 XNA?
June is the weakest month at 75.6% on time, compared with 86.4% in November. Across the year that is 11 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
- XNA to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to XNA82.8%
- American Airlines on CLT to XNA80.9%
- Envoy Air on CLT to XNA80.8%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- DFW to XNA, a related route78.2%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.8%
- American Airlines on-time record80.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.8%
- 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 XNA and XNA 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.