Carrier route record
AATPA→CLT
American Airlines · Tampa to Charlotte
- Flights
- 2,981
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 93%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on TPA to CLT lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 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 2,981 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's TPA to CLT record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,932 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.9%
Every carrier on TPA to CLT, 3,204 flights
These figures cover 2,981 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
American against every carrier on TPA to CLT
American flew 2,981 of the 3,204 flights on TPA to CLT, most of the route. Its 83.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.1% to Spirit at 79.3%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on TPA to CLT
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 33 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–8am633 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am644 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm533 flights83.4%
- 2pm–5pm720 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm382 flights70.6%
- 8pm–5am69 flights61.5%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 94.7% 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 720 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on TPA to CLT through the year
July is the worst month at 71.7% on time, 23 points below October, the best at 94.5%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 274 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.4%. 9 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 38,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
49% 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 38,000 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 37,719 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 94.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.3% 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 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 75.4% on time across 2,978 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 2,981 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 TPA to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 94.5% on time and July 71.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,932 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to TPA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to CLT81.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.