Route reliability record
LIT→CLT
Little Rock to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,262
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 640 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,262 LIT to CLT flights, of which Envoy Air flew 653 at 88.4% on time.
Best time to fly LIT to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.2%, against 84.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,230 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.46%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
88.4% on time across 653 flights
These figures cover 1,262 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 LIT to CLT
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 88.4% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 80.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 427 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 653 | 88.4% | 55 min | 1.23% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 427 | 80.9% | 102 min | 4.45% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 80.5% | 32 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 75.9% | 187 min | 2.84% | B |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.5% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Little Rock to Charlotte
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LIT → CLTLittle Rock to Charlotte | Envoy Air | 87.3% | 88.4% | 1.23% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. LIT → CLTLittle Rock to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 77.3% | 80.9% | 4.45% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 18 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am320 flights93.0%
- 8am–11am240 flights84.1%
- 11am–2pm263 flights85.0%
- 2pm–5pm207 flights79.7%
- 5pm–8pm232 flights75.2%
- 8pm–5am—
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 93.0% of the time, against 75.2% for the evening window. That is 18 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 320 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LIT 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 LIT to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 75.2%, a wide gap of 17.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.0%
- 8–11am84.1%
- 11am–2pm85.0%
- 2–5pm79.7%
- 5–8pm75.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 76.0% on time, 15 points below October, the best at 91.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 134 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.2%, a spread of 18 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 18,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 18,461 reported delay minutes.
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.46% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.5% 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.
The 640 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.5% on time across 1,263 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 1,262 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 91.4% on time and August 76.0%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,230 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIT to CLT questions
How often is LIT 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 15.8% of the 1,262 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIT to CLT?
Envoy Air leads at 88.4% on time across 653 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 80.9%, a gap of 8 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LIT to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.2%, 18 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 LIT to CLT?
August is the weakest month at 76.0% on time, compared with 91.4% in October. Across the year that is 15 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 LIT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on LIT to CLT88.4%
- PSA Airlines on LIT to CLT80.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to CLT75.9%
- LIT to DFW, a related route76.4%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- LIT to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.9%
- American Airlines on-time record80.5%
- 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. LIT to CLT and CLT to LIT 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.