Route reliability record
SDF→CLT
Louisville to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,754
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 335 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,754 SDF to CLT flights, of which American Airlines flew 978 at 83.9% on time.
Best time to fly SDF to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Friday flights 85.8%, against 82.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,717 completed flights
Avg delay
113 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
83.9% on time across 978 flights
These figures cover 1,754 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
Which airline is most reliable on SDF to CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 50 | 96.0% | 69 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 978 | 83.9% | 127 min | 2.76% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 726 | 79.9% | 99 min | 1.24% | B |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 83.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Louisville to Charlotte
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SDF → CLTLouisville to Charlotte | American Airlines | 81.6% | 83.9% | 2.76% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. SDF → CLTLouisville to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 78.9% | 79.9% | 1.24% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 16 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am410 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am362 flights85.9%
- 11am–2pm234 flights85.1%
- 2pm–5pm296 flights75.4%
- 5pm–8pm294 flights75.3%
- 8pm–5am158 flights76.9%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 75.3% for the evening window. That is 16 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 410 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 74.1% on time, 16 points below January, the best at 90.4%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 165 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.3%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 34,000 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%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 33,782 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 16,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 335 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 76.3% on time across 1,754 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,754 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. January runs 90.4% on time and July 74.1%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,717 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SDF to CLT questions
How often is SDF 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 17.4% of the 1,754 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SDF to CLT?
American Airlines leads at 83.9% on time across 978 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 79.9%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SDF to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.3%, 16 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 SDF to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 74.1% on time, compared with 90.4% in January. Across the year that is 16 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 SDF — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on SDF to CLT83.9%
- PSA Airlines on SDF to CLT79.9%
- SDF to ORD, a related route79.0%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- SDF to ATL, a related route90.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record96.0%
- American Airlines on-time record83.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record79.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SDF to CLT and CLT to SDF 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.