Carrier route record
AACLT→XNA
American Airlines · Charlotte to Bentonville
- Flights
- 135
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to XNA earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 135 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 694 at 81.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's CLT to XNA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 134 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.74%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.0%
Every carrier on CLT to XNA, 1,456 flights
These figures cover 135 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on CLT to XNA
American flew 135 of the 1,456 flights on CLT to XNA, about 9% of it. Its 85.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 85.1% to Envoy at 79.9%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 135 | 85.1% | 105 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 694 | 81.3% | 63 min | 3.03% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 627 | 79.9% | 76 min | 1.75% | B |
PSA Airlines cancels 3.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 135 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am64 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am61 flights82.0%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 88.9% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.0% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 64 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to XNA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202556 flights82.1%
- Oct–Dec 202562 flights86.9%
- Apr–Jun 202612 flights—
- Jul–Sep 20265 flights—
Scale runs 75% 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 85.1% on time across 135 flights.
Split by quarter, American on CLT to XNA logged 56 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 62 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 12 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 5 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 85.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on CLT to XNA runs when it is late
American on CLT to XNA often beats the schedule: 58 of 134 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 20 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 4 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early58 flights43.3%
- Within 15 min56 flights41.8%
- 15–29 min late6 flights4.5%
- 30–59 min late4 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights4.5%
- 2+ hours late4 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 134 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
4 of 23 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. Only 1 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on CLT to XNA
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 September 2025, 8 hours 34 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. Three of the five worst days fell in September 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2025 | 8 hours 34 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 4 October 2025 | 6 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 September 2025 | 2 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 October 2025 | 2 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 September 2025 | 1 hour 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
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 2,096 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 26% 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 4.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,096 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 840 of the 2,096 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.74%, below the national 1.89% 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
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 91.8% on time across 136 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 135 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. 135 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 85.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 134 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 XNA81.3%
- Envoy Air on CLT to XNA79.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.