Carrier route record
AAIAD→CLT
American Airlines · Washington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 536
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on IAD to CLT lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 536 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 967 at 83.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's IAD to CLT record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 525 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.1%
Every carrier on IAD to CLT, 1,990 flights
These figures cover 536 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on IAD to CLT
American flew 536 of the 1,990 flights on IAD to CLT, about 27% of it. Its 83.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.7% to Republic at 81.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 85.7% | 62 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 967 | 83.8% | 114 min | 3.21% | B− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 536 | 83.0% | 92 min | 1.87% | B |
| Republic Airways | 452 | 81.3% | 67 min | 2.65% | B |
PSA Airlines cancels 3.2% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am281 flights88.4%
- 8am–11am57 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm43 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm19 flights—
- 8pm–5am136 flights70.2%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.5% of the time, against 70.2% 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 281 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on IAD to CLT through the year
July is the worst month at 64.3% on time, 29 points below March, the best at 93.5%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 82 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on IAD to CLT runs when it is late
American on IAD to CLT often beats the schedule: 181 of 525 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 89 late arrivals split 33 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early181 flights34.5%
- Within 15 min255 flights48.6%
- 15–29 min late33 flights6.3%
- 30–59 min late19 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights3.0%
- 2+ hours late21 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 525 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 92 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on IAD to CLT
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 November 2025, 14 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 November 2025 | 14 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 August 2026 | 10 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 December 2025 | 8 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 July 2026 | 5 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 June 2026 | 4 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 8,167 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,167 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 to one. The split is drawn from 8,167 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 89.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.87% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 322 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 68.7% on time across 537 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 536 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 American on IAD to CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 536 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 525 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to IAD, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on IAD to CLT83.8%
- Republic Airways on IAD to CLT81.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) 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 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.