Carrier route record
AAPIT→CLT
American Airlines · Pittsburgh to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,774
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 92%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PIT to CLT 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,774 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's PIT to CLT record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,749 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.9%
Every carrier on PIT to CLT, 1,933 flights
These figures cover 1,774 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
American against every carrier on PIT to CLT
American flew 1,774 of the 1,933 flights on PIT to CLT, most of the route. Its 85.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 85.0% to PSA at 71.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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) | 1,774 | 85.0% | 82 min | 1.24% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 159 | 71.1% | 84 min | 6.29% | C− |
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–8am491 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am465 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm256 flights84.9%
- 2pm–5pm192 flights80.2%
- 5pm–8pm331 flights68.9%
- 8pm–5am39 flights78.9%
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 68.9% 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
American on PIT to CLT through the year
December is the weak month at 76.3% 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 175 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.5%. 10 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 49% of the 21,000 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
- 34%Carrier
- 15%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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 21,445 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 7,364 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.7% 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 77.8% on time across 1,773 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 1,774 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 PIT to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 90.6% on time and December 76.3%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,749 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PIT to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to PIT, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on PIT to CLT71.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) 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.