Route reliability record
ECP→CLT
Panama City to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,146
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 437 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 1,146 ECP to CLT flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly ECP to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.2%, against 85.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,127 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
85.4% on time across 983 flights
These figures cover 1,146 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 ECP 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 96.0% | 101 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 983 | 85.4% | 92 min | 1.83% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 113 | 85.0% | 44 min | 0.00% | A+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Panama City 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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ECP → CLTPanama City to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 83.8% | 85.4% | 1.83% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. VPS → CLTValparaiso to Charlotte | American Airlines | 82.9% | 83.8% | 1.04% | 8am–11am, Wed | AA 2909 16:40 |
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 13 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–8am247 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am224 flights91.0%
- 11am–2pm238 flights85.9%
- 2pm–5pm260 flights83.0%
- 5pm–8pm177 flights77.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.0% of the time, against 77.6% for the evening window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 260 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 76.1% on time, 18 points below October, the best at 94.4%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.6%. 13 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 60% of the 14,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
60% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 13,967 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.57% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.3% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 437 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.5% on time across 1,147 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,146 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 94.4% on time and June 76.1%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,127 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ECP to CLT questions
How often is ECP 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 14.2% of the 1,146 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ECP to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
85.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ECP to CLT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 77.6%, 13 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 ECP to CLT?
June is the weakest month at 76.1% on time, compared with 94.4% in October. Across the year that is 18 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 ECP — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on ECP to CLT85.4%
- Envoy Air on ECP to CLT85.0%
- ECP to ATL, a related route86.2%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- ECP to DFW, a related route77.2%
- American Airlines on-time record96.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record85.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.0%
- 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. ECP to CLT and CLT to ECP 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.