Route reliability record
CVG→CLT
Cincinnati to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,771
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 335 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 1,771 CVG to CLT flights, of which American Airlines flew 961 at 82.5% on time.
Best time to fly CVG to CLT: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.1%, against 81.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,732 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.03%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
82.5% on time across 961 flights
These figures cover 1,771 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CVG to CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 54 | 83.7% | 58 min | 9.26% | B− |
| American Airlines | 961 | 82.5% | 97 min | 1.87% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 756 | 79.8% | 119 min | 1.72% | B |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 82.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cincinnati to Charlotte
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. CVG → CLTCincinnati to Charlotte | American Airlines | 81.0% | 82.5% | 1.87% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. CVG → CLTCincinnati to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 78.4% | 79.8% | 1.72% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
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 19 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am440 flights88.8%
- 8am–11am458 flights84.8%
- 11am–2pm226 flights89.1%
- 2pm–5pm298 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm261 flights71.0%
- 8pm–5am88 flights75.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 89.1% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 70.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 458 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CVG to CLT by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CVG to CLT, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 89.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 70.2%, a wide gap of 18.9 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am88.8%
- 8–11am84.8%
- 11am–2pm89.1%
- 2–5pm70.2%
- 5–8pm71.0%
- 8pm–5am75.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
December is the weak month at 67.4% on time, against 86.8% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.6%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 34,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 44%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 34,378 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.5% 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.
At 335 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.6% on time across 1,772 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,771 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.8% on time and December 67.4%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,732 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CVG to CLT questions
How often is CVG 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 18.6% of the 1,771 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CVG to CLT?
American Airlines leads at 82.5% on time across 961 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 79.8%, a gap of 3 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 CVG to CLT?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 89.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.2%, 19 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 December delays on CVG to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 67.4% on time, compared with 86.8% in September. Across the year that is 19 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 CVG — the return legseparate record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on CVG to CLT82.5%
- PSA Airlines on CVG to CLT79.8%
- CVG to ORD, a related route70.8%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- CVG to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record83.7%
- American Airlines on-time record82.5%
- PSA Airlines on-time record79.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CVG to CLT and CLT to CVG 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.