Route reliability record
OKC→CLT
Oklahoma City to Charlotte
- Flights
- 794
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 940 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.2 hours. That rests on 794 OKC to CLT flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly OKC to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Friday flights 88.3%, against 85.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 775 completed flights
Avg delay
133 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
85.9% on time across 592 flights
These figures cover 794 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 OKC 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 592 | 85.9% | 140 min | 1.86% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 138 | 85.9% | 96 min | 2.17% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 64 | 78.1% | 142 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 794 flights.
- 5am–8am360 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm134 flights83.1%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights82.2%
- 5pm–8pm147 flights80.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.6% of the time, against 80.1% for the evening window. That is 10 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 360 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.
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 79.0%. February is the strongest month at 97.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. May was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 82.1%. 6 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. Carrier accounts for 57% 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.
- 57%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
38% 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 29 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 15,154 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 8,570 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.63%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 about 2.2 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 940 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 80.2% on time across 794 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 794 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. 794 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 85.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 775 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OKC to CLT questions
How often is OKC to CLT delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.7% of the 794 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.2 hours on average.
How reliable is OKC to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
85.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OKC to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.1%, 10 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 April delays on OKC to CLT?
April is the weakest month at 79.0% on time, compared with 97.1% in February. 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 OKC — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on OKC to CLT85.9%
- PSA Airlines on OKC to CLT85.9%
- OKC to DFW, a related route78.5%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- OKC to DEN, a related route79.2%
- American Airlines on-time record85.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record85.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.1%
- 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. OKC to CLT and CLT to OKC 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.