Route reliability record
SFO→CLT
San Francisco to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,496
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,296 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.2 hours. That rests on 1,496 SFO to CLT flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.0% of the time and Saturday flights 92.0%, against 85.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,474 completed flights
Avg delay
129 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
85.6% on time across 1,496 flights
These figures cover 1,496 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO 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 | 1,496 | 85.6% | 129 min | 1.20% | A |
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 14 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–8am408 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am307 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm293 flights77.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am488 flights86.8%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.7% on time against 92.0% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 488 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
June is the worst month at 77.5% on time, 14 points below October, the best at 91.9%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.3%. 11 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 52% of the 27,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%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 27,000 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 27,441 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 14,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% 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 2.2 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,296 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.7% on time across 1,496 flights, 20 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 20 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,496 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. October runs 91.9% on time and June 77.5%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,474 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to CLT questions
How often is SFO to CLT delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.4% of the 1,496 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.2 hours on average.
How reliable is SFO to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
85.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 77.7%, 14 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 June delays on SFO to CLT?
June is the weakest month at 77.5% on time, compared with 91.9% in October. Across the year that is 14 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 SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- American Airlines on-time record85.6%
- 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. SFO to CLT and CLT to SFO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SFO to CLT’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.