Carrier route record
AAPNS→CLT
American Airlines · Pensacola to Charlotte
- Flights
- 632
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PNS to CLT earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.4 hours. That rests on 632 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's PNS to CLT record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 623 completed flights
Avg delay
141 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.7%
Every carrier on PNS to CLT, 1,934 flights
These figures cover 632 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
American against every carrier on PNS to CLT
American flew 632 of the 1,934 flights on PNS to CLT, about 33% of it. Its 87.2% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 87.2% to Envoy at 77.8%. 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) | 632 | 87.2% | 141 min | 1.42% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 1,192 | 82.4% | 153 min | 2.43% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 110 | 77.8% | 36 min | 1.82% | B |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
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 632 flights.
- 5am–8am89 flights84.1%
- 8am–11am81 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm257 flights86.3%
- 2pm–5pm128 flights86.7%
- 5pm–8pm77 flights93.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 9 points.
Across the year
American on PNS to CLT through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 91.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 81.8%. 13 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 65% of the 11,000 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.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 3%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
65% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 65 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 11,300 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.42% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 488 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.3% on time across 632 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 632 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on PNS to CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 632 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 87.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 623 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PNS to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to PNS, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on PNS to CLT82.4%
- Envoy Air on PNS to CLT77.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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.