Route reliability record
PIT→CLT
Pittsburgh to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,981
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 366 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,981 PIT to CLT flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly PIT to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.9%, against 82.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,941 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.82%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
84.6% on time across 1,761 flights
These figures cover 1,981 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 PIT 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 | 1,761 | 84.6% | 94 min | 1.25% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 220 | 65.4% | 80 min | 6.36% | C− |
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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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am493 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am485 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm269 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm301 flights74.8%
- 5pm–8pm316 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am117 flights68.5%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.2% of the time, against 68.5% for the overnight window. That is 24 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 493 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PIT 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 PIT to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 68.5%, a wide gap of 23.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.2%
- 8–11am88.7%
- 11am–2pm84.3%
- 2–5pm74.8%
- 5–8pm68.8%
- 8pm–5am68.5%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
August is the worst month at 69.6% on time, 21 points below November, the best at 90.6%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 194 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.1%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 31,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 30,763 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.3% 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.
At 366 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.8% on time across 1,980 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,981 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: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 90.6% on time and August 69.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,941 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIT to CLT questions
How often is PIT 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 17.5% of the 1,981 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is PIT to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
82.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.5%, 24 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 August delays on PIT to CLT?
August is the weakest month at 69.6% on time, compared with 90.6% in November. Across the year that is 21 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 PIT — the return legseparate record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PIT to CLT84.6%
- PSA Airlines on PIT to CLT65.4%
- PIT to ORD, a related route77.1%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- PIT to LGA, a related route79.9%
- American Airlines on-time record84.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record65.4%
- 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. PIT to CLT and CLT to PIT 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.