Route reliability record
SBN→CLT
South Bend to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,028
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 534 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,028 SBN to CLT flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly SBN to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.8%, against 78.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 992 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
78.2% on time across 1,028 flights
These figures cover 1,028 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SBN 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 1,028 | 78.2% | 109 min | 3.31% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBN 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights83.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm349 flights79.3%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm298 flights70.9%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.7% of the time, against 70.9% for the evening window. That is 13 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SBN 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 SBN to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.9%, a wide gap of 12.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.7%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm79.3%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm70.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 38 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.
December is the weak month at 57.1% on time, against 95.6% in September. 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 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.6%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,501 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.31%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 534 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 75.1% on time across 1,028 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,028 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CLT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.31% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 992 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBN to CLT questions
How often is SBN to CLT delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.8% of the 1,028 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is SBN to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
78.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBN to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.9%, 13 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 December delays on SBN to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 57.1% on time, compared with 95.6% in September. Across the year that is 38 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 SBN — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- SBN to ORD, a related route65.5%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- SBN to ATL, a related route76.5%
- PSA Airlines on-time record78.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. SBN to CLT and CLT to SBN 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.