Route reliability record
CVG→CLT
Cincinnati to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,797
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 335 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 2 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,797 CVG to CLT flights, of which American Airlines flew 924 at 80.0% on time.
Best time to fly CVG to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.6%, against 80.0% 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
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,758 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
80.0% on time across 924 flights
These figures cover 1,797 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
Which airline is most reliable on CVG to CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: half 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 59 | 81.5% | 55 min | 8.47% | B− |
| American Airlines | 924 | 80.0% | 89 min | 1.95% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 814 | 79.8% | 129 min | 1.60% | B |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 80.0%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 | PSA Airlines | 78.5% | 79.8% | 1.60% | 11am–2pm, Fri | — |
| 2. CVG → CLTCincinnati to Charlotte | American Airlines | 78.4% | 80.0% | 1.95% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am419 flights88.2%
- 8am–11am456 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm260 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm281 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm293 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am88 flights75.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.2% of the time, against 68.8% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 456 flights scheduled in it.
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 84.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.9%. 12 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. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 38,000 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
43% 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 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 37,513 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 17,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually 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.
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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.3% on time across 1,798 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 1,797 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. 1,758 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 20.0% of the 1,797 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 80.0% on time across 924 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 79.8%, a gap of half a point. 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.8%, 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 CLT80.0%
- PSA Airlines on CVG to CLT79.8%
- CVG to ORD, a related route70.2%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- CVG to ATL, a related route86.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.5%
- American Airlines on-time record80.0%
- 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 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.