Carrier route record

AAIAD→CLT

American Airlines · Washington to Charlotte

Flights: 440
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 4

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

American on IAD 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 440 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 1,032 at 84.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, American's IAD to CLT record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 433 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.36%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.7%

Every carrier on IAD to CLT, 1,994 flights

These figures cover 440 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 IAD to CLT

American flew 440 of the 1,994 flights on IAD to CLT, about 22% of it. Its 85.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.5% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on IAD to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	26	88.5%	50 min	0.00%	A+
American Airlines (this page)	440	85.2%	81 min	1.36%	A
PSA Airlines	1,032	84.1%	104 min	3.39%	B−
Republic Airways	496	81.3%	72 min	2.82%	B

PSA Airlines cancels 3.4% 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.

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 22 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am242 flights89.0%
8am–11am33 flights93.9%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm43 flights72.1%
5pm–8pm19 flights—
8pm–5am103 flights76.2%

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 93.9% of the time, against 72.1% for the afternoon window. That is 22 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 242 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on IAD to CLT through the year

Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025159 flights83.5%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights92.5%
Apr–Jun 2026170 flights83.3%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 85.2% on time across 440 flights.

Quarter by quarter American on IAD to CLT held fairly steady: 83.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.

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 5,197 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
13%
Extreme weather
2%

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 5,197 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 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 5,197 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 2,017 of the 5,197 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.1% 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.

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 75.4% on time across 441 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 440 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. 440 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 85.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 433 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