Route reliability record
MCI→CLT
Kansas City to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,216
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 808 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,216 MCI to CLT flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCI to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.5%, against 81.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,188 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
80.6% on time across 1,171 flights
These figures cover 1,216 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 MCI 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,171 | 80.6% | 99 min | 2.13% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 15 | 69.2% | 37 min | 13.33% | C− |
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 28 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–8am345 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am59 flights98.3%
- 11am–2pm306 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm164 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm342 flights70.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 98.3% of the time, against 70.1% for the evening window. That is 28 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 345 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.
December is the weak month at 75.7% on time, against 90.1% in February. 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 117 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.4%. 14 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 56% of the 22,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 22,081 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 98.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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.
The 808 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.0% on time across 1,214 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 1,216 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. February runs 90.1% on time and December 75.7%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,188 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to CLT questions
How often is MCI to CLT delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.0% of the 1,216 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MCI to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
81.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCI to CLT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 98.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.1%, 28 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 MCI to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 75.7% on time, compared with 90.1% in February. 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 MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- MCI to DEN, a related route76.1%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record80.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record69.2%
- 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. MCI to CLT and CLT to MCI 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.