Route reliability record
CRW→CLT
Charleston to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,158
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 221 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,158 CRW to CLT flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly CRW to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.5% of the time and Saturday flights 84.3%, against 79.4% 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
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,119 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
79.4% on time across 1,158 flights
These figures cover 1,158 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 CRW to CLT
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 Airlines | 1,158 | 79.4% | 88 min | 3.28% | B− |
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 24 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–8am303 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am54 flights83.3%
- 11am–2pm387 flights83.1%
- 2pm–5pm88 flights73.3%
- 5pm–8pm232 flights70.6%
- 8pm–5am94 flights63.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.7% on time, against 87.5% for the 5am–8am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 387 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
February is the weak month at 67.1% on time, against 87.8% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. November was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.3%. 9 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 47% of the 20,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
47% 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 5 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 20,232 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 7,118 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.28%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 221 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.6% on time across 1,158 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,158 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 CLT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.28% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,119 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CRW to CLT questions
How often is CRW to CLT delayed?
About 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 20.6% of the 1,158 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CRW to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
79.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CRW to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.7%, 24 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 February delays on CRW to CLT?
February is the weakest month at 67.1% on time, compared with 87.8% in September. Across the year that is 21 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
- CLT to CRW — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- CRW to ORD, a related route64.8%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- ATL to CLT, a related route81.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record79.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CRW to CLT and CLT to CRW 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.