Route reliability record
PBI→CLT
West Palm Beach to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,694
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 590 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,694 PBI to CLT flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly PBI to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.0%, against 84.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,666 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
84.3% on time across 1,694 flights
These figures cover 1,694 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PBI 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 | 1,694 | 84.3% | 100 min | 1.53% | B |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly West Palm Beach 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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PBI → CLTWest Palm Beach to Charlotte | American Airlines | 83.0% | 84.3% | 1.53% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. FLL → CLTFort Lauderdale to Charlotte | American Airlines | 81.1% | 82.7% | 1.89% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → CLTFort Lauderdale to Charlotte | Spirit Airlines | 65.2% | 68.5% | 4.79% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am300 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am456 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm274 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm281 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm367 flights74.8%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
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 95.9% of the time, against 74.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 456 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PBI to CLT by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On PBI to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 74.8%, a wide gap of 21.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.9%
- 8–11am90.9%
- 11am–2pm81.7%
- 2–5pm76.8%
- 5–8pm74.8%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,694 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
October is the best month on the calendar at 89.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.9%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 26,062 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 590 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.4% on time across 1,693 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,694 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: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 74.8% on time against 95.9% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 21 points is the largest single thing you control here. American Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,666 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PBI to CLT questions
How often is PBI to CLT delayed?
About 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 15.7% of the 1,694 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is PBI to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
84.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PBI to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.8%, 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 April delays on PBI to CLT?
April is the weakest month at 77.4% on time, compared with 89.0% in October. Across the year that is 12 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 PBI — the return legseparate record
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PBI to ATL, a related route82.7%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- PBI to EWR, a related route75.8%
- American Airlines on-time record84.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. PBI to CLT and CLT to PBI 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.