Route reliability record
LEX→CLT
Lexington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,360
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 281 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 close to two hours on average. That rests on 1,360 LEX to CLT flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly LEX to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.6%, 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 1,325 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
82.9% on time across 1,360 flights
These figures cover 1,360 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LEX 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 1,360 | 82.9% | 103 min | 2.35% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on LEX to CLT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am362 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am150 flights89.9%
- 11am–2pm345 flights85.5%
- 2pm–5pm179 flights80.9%
- 5pm–8pm254 flights70.4%
- 8pm–5am70 flights56.1%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 92.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LEX 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 LEX to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.1%, a wide gap of 36.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.6%
- 8–11am89.9%
- 11am–2pm85.5%
- 2–5pm80.9%
- 5–8pm70.4%
- 8pm–5am56.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
August is the worst month at 71.0% on time, 20 points below January, the best at 90.7%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.2%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 23,278 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.35% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 281 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.5% on time across 1,359 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,360 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. January runs 90.7% on time and August 71.0%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,325 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LEX to CLT questions
How often is LEX 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 1,360 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is LEX 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 LEX to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.1%, 36 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 August delays on LEX to CLT?
August is the weakest month at 71.0% on time, compared with 90.7% in January. Across the year that is 20 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 LEX — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- LEX to ATL, a related route87.0%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- LEX to ORD, a related route73.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. LEX to CLT and CLT to LEX 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.