Carrier route record
AACLT→XNA
American Airlines · Charlotte to Bentonville
- Flights
- 206
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to XNA lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.1 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 206 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 649 at 82.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on CLT to XNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 204 completed flights
Avg delay
127 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.7%
Every carrier on CLT to XNA, 1,482 flights
These figures cover 206 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 XNA
American flew 206 of the 1,482 flights on CLT to XNA, about 14% of it. Its 80.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 82.8% to Envoy at 80.8%.
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
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–11am79 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm7 flights—
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am114 flights75.2%
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 89.7% of the time, against 75.2% for the overnight 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 114 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to XNA through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025132 flights77.9%
- Oct–Dec 202562 flights86.9%
- Apr–Jun 202612 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 80.9% on time across 206 flights.
Split by quarter, American on CLT to XNA logged 132 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 62 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 12 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.0%. 7 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. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 4,955 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 4,955 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 2,426 of the 4,955 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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. 9.3% 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.
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 88.8% on time across 207 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 206 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 XNA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 206 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 80.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 204 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to XNA, every carrier
- American on XNA to CLT, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on CLT to XNA82.8%
- Envoy Air on CLT to XNA80.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.