Carrier route record

AADEN→CLT

American Airlines · Denver to Charlotte

Flights: 1,715
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 61%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on DEN to CLT earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,715 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's DEN to CLT record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,688 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.40%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.4%

Every carrier on DEN to CLT, 2,813 flights

These figures cover 1,715 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

American against every carrier on DEN to CLT

American flew 1,715 of the 2,813 flights on DEN to CLT, most of the route. Its 85.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 86.7% to Southwest at 70.1%. Three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	214	86.7%	54 min	1.40%	A
American Airlines (this page)	1,715	85.1%	76 min	1.40%	A
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	20	80.0%	44 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	675	77.6%	66 min	0.59%	B+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	189	70.1%	43 min	2.65%	C

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 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–8am389 flights93.2%
8am–11am371 flights84.5%
11am–2pm271 flights87.7%
2pm–5pm367 flights76.6%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am317 flights83.4%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 76.6% for the afternoon 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 389 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DEN to CLT through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 68.1% on time, 28 points below November, the best at 96.2%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 156 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.9%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 19,254 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 7,594 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,337 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.1% on time across 1,717 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,715 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.

What to do with this

Booking American on DEN to CLT

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 96.2% on time and July 68.1%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,688 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures