Route reliability record
TYS→CLT
Knoxville to Charlotte
- Flights
- 867
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 176 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 867 TYS to CLT flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly TYS to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.9%, against 79.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 846 completed flights
Avg delay
121 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
81.6% on time across 607 flights
These figures cover 867 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on TYS 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 26 | 92.3% | 43 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 607 | 81.6% | 127 min | 3.13% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 193 | 71.9% | 125 min | 0.52% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 65.0% | 73 min | 0.00% | 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 29 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–8am287 flights87.2%
- 8am–11am238 flights78.5%
- 11am–2pm91 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm57 flights75.5%
- 5pm–8pm130 flights70.5%
- 8pm–5am64 flights58.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.7% on time, against 87.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 287 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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 48.5% on time, 39 points below May, the best at 87.8%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.9%. 15 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 45% of the 22,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 44%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
45% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 21,572 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 9,416 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.31% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 176 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.0% on time across 866 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. 867 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. 867 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 79.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 846 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TYS to CLT questions
How often is TYS to CLT delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.0% of the 867 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is TYS to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
79.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TYS to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.7%, 29 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 TYS to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 48.5% on time, compared with 87.8% in May. Across the year that is 39 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 TYS — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on TYS to CLT81.6%
- American Airlines on TYS to CLT71.9%
- TYS to ORD, a related route68.2%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- TYS to ATL, a related route87.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record92.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record81.6%
- American Airlines on-time record71.9%
- 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. TYS to CLT and CLT to TYS 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.