Carrier route record
AASTL→CLT
American Airlines · St. Louis to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,490
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on STL to CLT earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 1,490 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's STL to CLT record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,470 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.5%
Every carrier on STL to CLT, 1,827 flights
These figures cover 1,490 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 STL to CLT
American flew 1,490 of the 1,827 flights on STL to CLT, most of the route. Its 84.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 87.1% to Southwest at 76.2%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 75 | 87.1% | 228 min | 6.67% | A− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,490 | 84.6% | 109 min | 1.21% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 262 | 76.2% | 48 min | 0.38% | 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 16 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–8am504 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am386 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm156 flights73.7%
- 2pm–5pm249 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm195 flights83.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% 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 73.7% on time against 89.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 504 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on STL to CLT through the year
July is the worst month at 75.7% on time, 16 points below April, the best at 91.7%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 142 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.4%. 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 46% of the 25,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
42% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 24,836 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 11,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.6% 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 575 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 77.6% on time across 1,487 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 1,490 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on STL to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 91.7% on time and July 75.7%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,470 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- STL to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to STL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on STL to CLT76.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.