Carrier route record

AAVPS→CLT

American Airlines · Valparaiso to Charlotte

Flights: 865
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 72%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on VPS 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 865 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's VPS to CLT record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 853 completed flights

Avg delay

106 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.04%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.0%

Every carrier on VPS to CLT, 1,206 flights

These figures cover 865 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 VPS to CLT

American flew 865 of the 1,206 flights on VPS to CLT, most of the route. Its 83.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.8% to PSA at 77.1%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on VPS to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines (this page)	865	83.8%	106 min	1.04%	B
PSA Airlinesthin sample	341	77.1%	108 min	6.45%	B−

Flight by flight

American flight numbers on VPS to CLT

AA 290916:4076.8% · 274 flights

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 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–8am243 flights89.6%
8am–11am111 flights90.6%
11am–2pm234 flights82.8%
2pm–5pm228 flights78.4%
5pm–8pm49 flights70.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 70.8% for the evening 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 243 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on VPS to CLT through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.December best, June worst

June is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 27 points below December, the best at 93.6%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.8%. 14 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 50% of the 15,000 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.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
5%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

40% 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 15,000 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 14,634 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 7,276 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.9% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 460 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.2% on time across 865 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 865 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.

What to do with this

Booking American on VPS to CLT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 865 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 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 853 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures