Route reliability record
DAB→CLT
Daytona Beach to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,399
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 416 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,399 DAB to CLT flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAB to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.0%, against 84.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,359 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
85.2% on time across 1,136 flights
These figures cover 1,399 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 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 DAB 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 | 1,136 | 85.2% | 84 min | 3.35% | A− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 263 | 83.5% | 131 min | 0.76% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DAB to CLT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Daytona Beach to Charlotte
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAB → CLTDaytona Beach to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 82.3% | 85.2% | 3.35% | 5am–8am, Wed | OH 5412 13:46 |
| 2. MCO → CLTOrlando to Charlotte | Frontier Airlines | 79.6% | 80.6% | 1.19% | 5am–8am, Thu | F9 1446 06:00 |
| 3. MCO → CLTOrlando to Charlotte | American Airlines | 77.5% | 78.8% | 1.60% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 1896 05:00 |
| 4. MCO → CLTOrlando to Charlotte | Spirit Airlines | 69.1% | 72.3% | 4.47% | 5am–8am, 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 22 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–8am363 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am11 flights—
- 11am–2pm582 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm165 flights88.6%
- 5pm–8pm237 flights74.0%
- 8pm–5am41 flights70.3%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 70.3% for the overnight window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 582 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 76.0% on time, against 91.3% 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. September was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.7%. 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 49% of the 19,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,256 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
6.8% 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 416 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 79.6% on time across 1,400 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,399 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 2.86% 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. 1,359 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAB to CLT questions
How often is DAB to CLT delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.1% of the 1,399 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DAB to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
84.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAB to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.3%, 22 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 DAB to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 76.0% on time, compared with 91.3% in September. Across the year that is 15 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 DAB — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on DAB to CLT85.2%
- American Airlines on DAB to CLT83.5%
- DAB to ATL, a related route88.1%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- ATL to CLT, a related route81.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record85.2%
- American Airlines on-time record83.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DAB to CLT and CLT to DAB 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.