Route reliability record
SJU→CLT
San Juan to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,077
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,475 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 close to two hours. That rests on 1,077 SJU to CLT flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Best time to fly SJU to CLT: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.4%, 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 1,056 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.67%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
87.1% on time across 988 flights
These figures cover 1,077 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 SJU 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 | 988 | 87.1% | 117 min | 1.62% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 69.0% | 56 min | 2.25% | C |
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 11 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–8am162 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am213 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm143 flights87.3%
- 2pm–5pm472 flights82.0%
- 5pm–8pm87 flights92.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 11 points.
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.
July is the worst month at 77.3% on time, 14 points below February, the best at 91.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 135 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.0%. 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 16,000 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
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
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 8,326 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,102 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.67% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.9% 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.
The 1,475 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.6% on time across 1,077 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. 1,077 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: treat all of this as provisional. 1,077 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 85.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,056 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SJU to CLT questions
How often is SJU 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 1,077 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is SJU 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 SJU to CLT?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.0%, 11 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 SJU to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 77.3% on time, compared with 91.5% in February. 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 SJU — the return legseparate record
- Luis Munoz Marin International (SJU) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- SJU to MCO, a related route78.9%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- SJU to JFK, a related route79.3%
- American Airlines on-time record87.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record69.0%
- 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. SJU to CLT and CLT to SJU 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.