Route reliability record
MSN→CLT
Madison to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,012
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 708 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,012 MSN to CLT flights, of which American Airlines flew 540 at 88.5% on time.
Best time to fly MSN to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Friday flights 88.1%, against 84.6% 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 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 993 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
88.5% on time across 540 flights
These figures cover 1,012 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 MSN to CLT
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 88.5% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 80.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 472 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 540 | 88.5% | 113 min | 1.30% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 472 | 80.1% | 87 min | 1.91% | B |
American leads PSA by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Madison 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. MSN → CLTMadison to Charlotte | American Airlines | 87.3% | 88.5% | 1.30% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. MSN → CLTMadison to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 78.6% | 80.1% | 1.91% | 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 21 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am281 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am103 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm309 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm176 flights74.6%
- 5pm–8pm143 flights72.1%
- 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 92.8% of the time, against 72.1% for the evening window. That is 21 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 309 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 73.6% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 92.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.5%. 10 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 53% of the 15,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
53% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 14,915 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 708 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 77.8% on time across 1,011 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,012 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CLT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,012 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 84.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 993 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSN to CLT questions
How often is MSN to CLT delayed?
Roughly 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 15.4% of the 1,012 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSN to CLT?
American Airlines leads at 88.5% on time across 540 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 80.1%, 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 MSN to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 72.1%, 21 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 MSN to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 73.6% on time, compared with 92.0% in September. Across the year that is 18 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 MSN — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on MSN to CLT88.5%
- PSA Airlines on MSN to CLT80.1%
- MSN to ORD, a related route71.9%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- MSN to DCA, a related route75.0%
- American Airlines on-time record88.5%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.1%
- 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. MSN to CLT and CLT to MSN 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.