Route reliability record
RDU→CLT
Raleigh to Charlotte
- Flights
- 3,030
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 130 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 3,030 RDU to CLT flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly RDU to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.6%, against 81.9% 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 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,983 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
81.8% on time across 3,010 flights
These figures cover 3,030 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 RDU 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 40.00% | A− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 15 | 86.7% | 41 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 3,010 | 81.8% | 85 min | 1.50% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on RDU to CLT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am628 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am417 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm574 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm693 flights78.2%
- 5pm–8pm496 flights74.0%
- 8pm–5am222 flights63.9%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 93.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 693 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RDU 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 RDU to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 63.9%, a wide gap of 29.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.1%
- 8–11am86.7%
- 11am–2pm84.2%
- 2–5pm78.2%
- 5–8pm74.0%
- 8pm–5am63.9%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
July is the worst month at 67.8% on time, 23 points below April, the best at 90.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 273 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 46,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 46,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 to one. The split is drawn from 46,009 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.6% 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.
At 130 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 77.4% on time across 3,029 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,030 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. April runs 90.3% on time and July 67.8%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,983 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDU to CLT questions
How often is RDU 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 18.1% of the 3,030 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RDU to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
81.9% 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 RDU to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.9%, 29 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 July delays on RDU to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 67.8% on time, compared with 90.3% in April. Across the year that is 23 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 RDU — the return legseparate record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- RDU to ATL, a related route86.5%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- RDU to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record86.7%
- American Airlines on-time record81.8%
- 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. RDU to CLT and CLT to RDU 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.