Route reliability record
LAX→CLT
Los Angeles to Charlotte
- Flights
- 2,279
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,125 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 a little over an hour on average. That rests on 2,279 LAX to CLT flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAX to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.9%, against 82.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,252 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
82.9% on time across 2,279 flights
These figures cover 2,279 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
Which airline is most reliable on LAX 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 Airlines | 2,279 | 82.9% | 80 min | 1.01% | B |
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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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am514 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am350 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm429 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights73.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am819 flights83.1%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 73.3% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 819 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX to CLT by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LAX to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 73.3%, a wide gap of 19.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.2%
- 8–11am75.2%
- 11am–2pm80.1%
- 2–5pm73.3%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am83.1%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
July is the worst month at 74.3% on time, 17 points below October, the best at 91.7%. 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 213 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 31,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 to one. The split is drawn from 30,744 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,125 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 2,276 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 2,279 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 91.7% on time and July 74.3%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,252 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to CLT questions
How often is LAX to CLT delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.1% of the 2,279 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is LAX to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
82.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 73.3%, 20 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 July delays on LAX to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 74.3% on time, compared with 91.7% in October. Across the year that is 17 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 LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- American Airlines on-time record82.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. LAX to CLT and CLT to LAX 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.