Route reliability record
RSW→CLT
Fort Myers to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,773
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 600 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,773 RSW to CLT flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly RSW to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.5%, against 84.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,746 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
84.2% on time across 1,773 flights
These figures cover 1,773 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RSW 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 | 1,773 | 84.2% | 94 min | 1.41% | B |
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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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am291 flights96.8%
- 8am–11am430 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm285 flights86.8%
- 2pm–5pm444 flights75.6%
- 5pm–8pm322 flights73.5%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.8% of the time, against 73.5% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 444 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RSW 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 RSW to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 73.5%, a wide gap of 23.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.8%
- 8–11am90.8%
- 11am–2pm86.8%
- 2–5pm75.6%
- 5–8pm73.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 75.0% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 92.8%. 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 193 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.2%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 26,013 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.41% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.4% 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.
The 600 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 1,774 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 1,773 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. September runs 92.8% on time and July 75.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,746 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RSW to CLT questions
How often is RSW 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 15.8% of the 1,773 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RSW to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
84.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RSW to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.5%, 23 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 RSW to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 75.0% on time, compared with 92.8% in September. Across the year that is 18 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 RSW — the return legseparate record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- RSW to ORD, a related route76.4%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- RSW to ATL, a related route85.4%
- American Airlines on-time record84.2%
- 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. RSW to CLT and CLT to RSW 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.