Route reliability record
SRQ→CLT
Sarasota to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,426
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 547 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 a little over an hour. That rests on 1,426 SRQ to CLT flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly SRQ to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.9%, against 85.2% 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 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,398 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
87.0% on time across 1,021 flights
These figures cover 1,426 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 SRQ 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 | 1,021 | 87.0% | 75 min | 2.06% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 267 | 83.4% | 96 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 138 | 75.7% | 59 min | 1.45% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on SRQ 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sarasota to Charlotte
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SRQ → CLTSarasota to Charlotte | American Airlines | 85.2% | 87.0% | 2.06% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 1477 08:05 |
| 2. TPA → CLTTampa to Charlotte | American Airlines | 81.8% | 83.1% | 1.58% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 2538 07:15 |
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 20 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–8am237 flights93.0%
- 8am–11am309 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm457 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm101 flights82.5%
- 5pm–8pm274 flights80.7%
- 8pm–5am48 flights72.9%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.0% of the time, against 72.9% for the overnight window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 457 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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, 17 points below October, the best at 94.0%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.6%. 13 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
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 15,917 reported delay minutes.
53% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations sit at 1.68% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 547 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 77.8% on time across 1,427 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,426 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 94.0% on time and July 77.3%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,398 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SRQ to CLT questions
How often is SRQ 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 14.8% of the 1,426 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SRQ to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
85.2% 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 SRQ to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.9%, 20 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 SRQ to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 77.3% on time, compared with 94.0% in October. Across the year that is 17 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 SRQ — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on SRQ to CLT87.0%
- PSA Airlines on SRQ to CLT83.4%
- Envoy Air on SRQ to CLT75.7%
- SRQ to ATL, a related route88.9%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- SRQ to BWI, a related route82.8%
- American Airlines on-time record87.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record83.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.7%
- 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. SRQ to CLT and CLT to SRQ are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SRQ 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.