Route reliability record
PIT→CLT
Pittsburgh to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,933
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 366 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,933 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 Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.5%, against 83.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,898 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
85.0% on time across 1,774 flights
These figures cover 1,933 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
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 | 1,774 | 85.0% | 82 min | 1.24% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 159 | 71.1% | 84 min | 6.29% | C− |
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 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–8am491 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am483 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm300 flights83.2%
- 2pm–5pm247 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm332 flights69.0%
- 8pm–5am80 flights70.5%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.0% of the time, against 69.0% for the evening window. That is 25 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 491 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
December is the weak month at 74.5% on time, against 90.6% in November. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.0%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 25,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 25,054 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 8,696 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.66% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% 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 a little over an hour, 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 77.1% on time across 1,932 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 1,933 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 December 74.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,898 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 16.1% of the 1,933 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PIT to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
83.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 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 94.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.0%, 25 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 December delays on PIT to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 74.5% on time, compared with 90.6% in November. Across the year that is 16 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 CLT85.0%
- PSA Airlines on PIT to CLT71.1%
- PIT to ORD, a related route78.6%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- PIT to LGA, a related route80.9%
- American Airlines on-time record85.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record71.1%
- 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. 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.