Route reliability record
DAY→CLT
Dayton to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,341
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 370 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,341 DAY to CLT flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly DAY to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.5%, against 82.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,322 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
82.6% on time across 1,341 flights
These figures cover 1,341 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 DAY 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 | 1,341 | 82.6% | 103 min | 1.34% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on DAY 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.
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 17 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–8am385 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am307 flights85.0%
- 11am–2pm106 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm193 flights85.4%
- 5pm–8pm350 flights71.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.9% of the time, against 71.5% for the evening window. That is 17 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 385 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
June is the worst month at 75.2% on time, 16 points below October, the best at 91.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.5%. 8 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 24,000 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
- 29%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,755 reported delay minutes.
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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 sit at 1.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.3% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 370 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 74.6% on time across 1,340 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 1,341 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. October runs 91.1% on time and June 75.2%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,322 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAY to CLT questions
How often is DAY to CLT delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.4% of the 1,341 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is DAY to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
82.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAY to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.5%, 17 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 June delays on DAY to CLT?
June is the weakest month at 75.2% on time, compared with 91.1% in October. Across the year that is 16 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 DAY — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- DAY to ORD, a related route71.9%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- DAY to ATL, a related route89.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.6%
- 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. DAY to CLT and CLT to DAY 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.