Carrier route record
AARIC→CLT
American Airlines · Richmond to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,996
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 80%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on RIC to CLT earns a B. 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,996 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's RIC to CLT record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,953 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.10%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.4%
Every carrier on RIC to CLT, 2,498 flights
These figures cover 1,996 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 RIC to CLT
American flew 1,996 of the 2,498 flights on RIC to CLT, most of the route. Its 84.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 91.4% to SkyWest at 69.0%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 40 | 91.4% | 50 min | 12.50% | A− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,996 | 84.2% | 85 min | 2.10% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 431 | 80.0% | 76 min | 1.39% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 31 | 69.0% | 113 min | 6.45% | 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 17 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–8am646 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am368 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm157 flights84.0%
- 2pm–5pm226 flights86.8%
- 5pm–8pm387 flights76.6%
- 8pm–5am212 flights72.3%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.5% of the time, against 72.3% for the overnight window. That is 17 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 646 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on RIC to CLT through the year
July is the worst month at 71.4% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 89.4%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 199 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 81.3%. 8 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 47% of the 26,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
47% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 26,168 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 257 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.7% on time across 1,995 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,996 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 RIC to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 89.4% on time and July 71.4%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,953 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RIC to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to RIC, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on RIC to CLT80.0%
- 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.