Carrier route record

AAMSN→CLT

American Airlines · Madison to Charlotte

Flights: 540
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 53%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on MSN to CLT earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 540 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's MSN to CLT record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 109 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 531 completed flights

Avg delay

113 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.30%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.6%

Every carrier on MSN to CLT, 1,012 flights

These figures cover 540 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 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

American against every carrier on MSN to CLT

American flew 540 of the 1,012 flights on MSN to CLT, most of the route. Its 88.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 88.5% to PSA at 80.1%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSN to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines (this page)	540	88.5%	113 min	1.30%	A
PSA Airlines	472	80.1%	87 min	1.91%	B

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 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–8am281 flights92.8%
8am–11am103 flights89.8%
11am–2pm102 flights83.2%
2pm–5pm45 flights75.6%
5pm–8pm9 flights—
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 75.6% for the afternoon 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 281 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on MSN to CLT through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.July best, January worst

January is the weak month at 78.8% on time, against 93.5% in July. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 93.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.5%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,874 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
38%
Extreme weather
13%
National Airspace System
8%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,874 reported delay minutes.

41% 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 6,874 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 sit at 1.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.1% 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 close to two hours, 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 74.6% on time across 539 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 540 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.

What to do with this

Booking American on MSN to CLT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 540 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 88.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 531 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures