Route reliability record
LIT→CLT
Little Rock to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,209
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,209 LIT to CLT flights, of which Envoy Air flew 628 at 87.4% on time.
Best time to fly LIT to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.5%, against 84.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,173 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
87.4% on time across 628 flights
These figures cover 1,209 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LIT to CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 628 | 87.4% | 49 min | 1.59% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 451 | 82.3% | 90 min | 4.88% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 80.5% | 32 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 75.6% | 168 min | 3.37% | B− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.9% 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.
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 | 86.0% | 87.4% | 1.59% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. LIT → CLTLittle Rock to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 78.3% | 82.3% | 4.88% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
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 17 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am314 flights91.9%
- 8am–11am169 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm253 flights87.6%
- 2pm–5pm215 flights80.3%
- 5pm–8pm258 flights74.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.9% of the time, against 74.8% for the evening window. That is 17 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 314 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 77.0% on time, 14 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 91.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.3%. 15 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 57% of the 14,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,391 reported delay minutes.
57% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 2.89%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.1% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 81.7% on time across 1,210 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,209 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.89% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,173 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 15.6% of the 1,209 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIT to CLT?
Envoy Air leads at 87.4% on time across 628 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 82.3%, a gap of 5 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 91.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.8%, 17 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 LIT to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 77.0% on time, compared with 91.4% in October. Across the year that is 14 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 CLT87.4%
- PSA Airlines on LIT to CLT82.3%
- LIT to DFW, a related route73.2%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- LIT to ATL, a related route89.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.3%
- American Airlines on-time record80.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.