Carrier route record
AADTW→CLT
American Airlines · Detroit to Charlotte
- Flights
- 2,073
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DTW 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 2,073 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's DTW 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.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,033 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.8%
Every carrier on DTW to CLT, 3,537 flights
These figures cover 2,073 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 DTW to CLT
American flew 2,073 of the 3,537 flights on DTW to CLT, most of the route. Its 85.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to Frontier at 58.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,073 | 85.1% | 94 min | 1.83% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 88 | 83.9% | 95 min | 1.14% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,345 | 82.3% | 72 min | 1.49% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 58.6% | 172 min | 3.33% | D− |
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 19 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–8am591 flights88.2%
- 8am–11am316 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm442 flights88.2%
- 2pm–5pm339 flights81.9%
- 5pm–8pm294 flights73.9%
- 8pm–5am91 flights73.3%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 73.3% for the overnight window. That is 19 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 591 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DTW to CLT through the year
December is the weak month at 73.9% on time, against 93.5% in October. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 193 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.7%. 13 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 45% of the 29,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 43%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 28,519 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 12,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.83% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.7% 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.
The 500 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 78.9% on time across 2,074 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,073 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 DTW to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 93.5% on time and December 73.9%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,033 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to CLT82.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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 7.04 million flight records
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.