Carrier route record
AACVG→CLT
American Airlines · Cincinnati to Charlotte
- Flights
- 961
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 54%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CVG to CLT lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 961 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's CVG to CLT record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 942 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on CVG to CLT, 1,771 flights
These figures cover 961 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 CVG to CLT
American flew 961 of the 1,771 flights on CVG to CLT, most of the route. Its 82.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.7% to PSA at 79.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 54 | 83.7% | 58 min | 9.26% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 961 | 82.5% | 97 min | 1.87% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 756 | 79.8% | 119 min | 1.72% | B |
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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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am440 flights88.8%
- 8am–11am93 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm69 flights90.8%
- 2pm–5pm80 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm191 flights67.4%
- 8pm–5am88 flights75.0%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 67.4% for the evening window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 440 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CVG to CLT through the year
December is the weak month at 71.4% on time, against 90.3% in August. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 137 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.3%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on CVG to CLT runs when it is late
American on CVG to CLT often beats the schedule: 327 of 942 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 165 late arrivals split 57 under half an hour, 44 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 64 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early327 flights34.7%
- Within 15 min450 flights47.8%
- 15–29 min late57 flights6.1%
- 30–59 min late44 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late31 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 942 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
28 of 161 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 32 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on CVG to CLT
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 July 2026, 33 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 July 2026 | 33 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 April 2026 | 15 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 January 2026 | 8 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 July 2026 | 7 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 November 2025 | 6 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 16,077 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,215 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.87% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% 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 an hour and a half, 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.9% on time across 961 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 961 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 CVG to CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 961 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 942 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to CVG, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on CVG to CLT79.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.