Route reliability record
LEX→CLT
Lexington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,383
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 281 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,383 LEX to CLT flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly LEX to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.5%, against 83.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,353 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
83.7% on time across 1,383 flights
These figures cover 1,383 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 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 | 1,383 | 83.7% | 86 min | 2.02% | 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.
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 37 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–8am396 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am107 flights94.4%
- 11am–2pm346 flights85.8%
- 2pm–5pm192 flights83.7%
- 5pm–8pm260 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am82 flights57.7%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 94.4% for the 8am–11am 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 396 flights scheduled in it.
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.
December is the weak month at 73.8% on time, against 90.7% in January. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.9%. 11 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 59% of the 19,000 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
59% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 18,933 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 94.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.7% 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 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.3% on time across 1,384 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,383 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 December 73.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,353 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 16.3% of the 1,383 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is LEX to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
83.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 94.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.7%, 37 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 December delays on LEX to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 73.8% on time, compared with 90.7% in January. 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 LEX — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- LEX to ATL, a related route88.6%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- LEX to ORD, a related route71.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record83.7%
- 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. 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.