Carrier route record
OHDSM→CLT
PSA Airlines · Des Moines to Charlotte
- Flights
- 188
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DSM to CLT 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 close to two hours. That rests on 188 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, PSA's DSM to CLT record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 178 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.3%
Every carrier on DSM to CLT, 809 flights
These figures cover 188 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
PSA against every carrier on DSM to CLT
PSA flew 188 of the 809 flights on DSM to CLT, about 23% of it. Its 84.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 84.3% to American at 83.0%.
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 (this page)thin sample | 188 | 84.3% | 101 min | 5.32% | B− |
| American Airlines | 621 | 83.0% | 125 min | 2.09% | B |
Departure window
When PSA runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 188 flights.
- 5am–8am92 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm46 flights91.3%
- 2pm–5pm23 flights—
- 5pm–8pm27 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
PSA on DSM to CLT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202523 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025154 flights82.9%
- Jan–Mar 202611 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.3% on time across 188 flights.
Split by quarter, PSA on DSM to CLT logged 23 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 154 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 11 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.3% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 2,827 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
59% 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 2,827 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 2,827 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.32%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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 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.
The 815 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 77.4% on time across 188 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 188 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 PSA on DSM to CLT
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 178 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.