Route reliability record
MLB→CLT
Melbourne to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,131
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 490 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,131 MLB to CLT flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly MLB to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.1% of the time and Friday flights 88.7%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,101 completed flights
Avg delay
113 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
81.7% on time across 1,131 flights
These figures cover 1,131 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 MLB 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 | 1,131 | 81.7% | 113 min | 2.65% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on MLB 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Melbourne to Charlotte
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → CLTOrlando to Charlotte | Frontier Airlines | 79.6% | 80.6% | 1.19% | 5am–8am, Thu | F9 1446 06:00 |
| 2. MLB → CLTMelbourne to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 79.5% | 81.7% | 2.65% | 8am–11am, Fri | OH 5386 06:19 |
| 3. MCO → CLTOrlando to Charlotte | American Airlines | 77.5% | 78.8% | 1.60% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 1896 05:00 |
| 4. MCO → CLTOrlando to Charlotte | Spirit Airlines | 69.1% | 72.3% | 4.47% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 24 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–8am314 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am41 flights95.1%
- 11am–2pm363 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm87 flights77.1%
- 5pm–8pm326 flights71.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 95.1% of the time, against 71.3% for the evening window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
June is the worst month at 70.5% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 94.8%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.8%. 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 47% of the 23,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,686 reported delay minutes.
47% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 2.65%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
7.9% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 490 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 runs 80.4% on time across 1,131 flights, within about a point 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 1,131 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. September runs 94.8% on time and June 70.5%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,101 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MLB to CLT questions
How often is MLB to CLT delayed?
Roughly 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 18.3% of the 1,131 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is MLB to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
81.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MLB to CLT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 95.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.3%, 24 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 June delays on MLB to CLT?
June is the weakest month at 70.5% on time, compared with 94.8% in September. Across the year that is 24 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 MLB — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- MLB to ATL, a related route87.9%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- ATL to CLT, a related route81.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record81.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MLB to CLT and CLT to MLB 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.