Route reliability record
TPA→CLT
Tampa to Charlotte
- Flights
- 3,204
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 507 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,204 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,152 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
83.1% on time across 2,981 flights
These figures cover 3,204 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 TPA 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 | 2,981 | 83.1% | 76 min | 1.58% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 141 | 81.9% | 92 min | 2.13% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 82 | 79.3% | 89 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 32 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–8am702 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am688 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm548 flights83.1%
- 2pm–5pm766 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm430 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am70 flights62.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 93.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 766 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 71.2% on time, 22 points below October, the best at 93.4%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 314 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.5%. 9 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 50% of the 42,000 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
50% 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 42,000 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 41,529 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.5% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 507 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 75.1% on time across 3,205 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,204 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 93.4% on time and July 71.2%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,152 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to CLT questions
How often is TPA to CLT delayed?
About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.1% of the 3,204 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is TPA to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
82.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TPA to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.1%, 32 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 TPA to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 71.2% on time, compared with 93.4% in October. Across the year that is 22 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 TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record83.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record79.3%
- 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. TPA to CLT and CLT to TPA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.