Carrier route record
AAMSP→CLT
American Airlines · Minneapolis to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,263
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MSP to CLT 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,263 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's MSP to CLT record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,234 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.9%
Every carrier on MSP to CLT, 2,446 flights
These figures cover 1,263 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
American against every carrier on MSP to CLT
American flew 1,263 of the 2,446 flights on MSP to CLT, most of the route. Its 81.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 81.6% to Delta at 80.2%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,263 | 81.6% | 83 min | 1.98% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,183 | 80.2% | 73 min | 1.27% | 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 25 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–8am343 flights87.7%
- 8am–11am199 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm289 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm236 flights85.0%
- 5pm–8pm196 flights63.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.7% on time, against 88.7% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 343 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MSP to CLT through the year
December is the weak month at 68.6% on time, against 89.0% in April. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 19,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
48% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 18,920 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,840 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.4% 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 930 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 80.3% on time across 1,264 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 1,263 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on MSP to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 89.0% on time and December 68.6%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,234 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to MSP, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to CLT80.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.