Carrier route record
AASDF→CLT
American Airlines · Louisville to Charlotte
- Flights
- 978
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 56%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SDF to CLT lands a B, 6 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 about 2.1 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 978 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's SDF to CLT record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 951 completed flights
Avg delay
127 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.6%
Every carrier on SDF to CLT, 1,754 flights
These figures cover 978 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 SDF to CLT
American flew 978 of the 1,754 flights on SDF to CLT, most of the route. Its 83.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 96.0% to PSA at 79.9%. One 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 | 50 | 96.0% | 69 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 978 | 83.9% | 127 min | 2.76% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 726 | 79.9% | 99 min | 1.24% | B |
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–8am306 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am268 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm68 flights87.5%
- 2pm–5pm122 flights73.7%
- 5pm–8pm99 flights77.9%
- 8pm–5am115 flights75.2%
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 90.6% of the time, against 73.7% for the afternoon 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 306 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SDF to CLT through the year
June is the worst month at 73.5% on time, 21 points below August, the best at 94.4%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.1%. 12 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. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 19,000 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
38% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 19,462 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 9,813 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.76%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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 costs
7.5% 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 about 2.1 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 75.2% on time across 976 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 978 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on SDF to CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 978 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 951 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.