Route reliability record
XNA→CLT
Bentonville to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,483
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 754 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 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 1,483 XNA to CLT flights, of which Envoy Air flew 627 at 88.6% on time.
Best time to fly XNA to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.2%, against 86.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,452 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
88.6% on time across 627 flights
These figures cover 1,483 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
Which airline is most reliable on XNA to CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 88.8% | 213 min | 0.48% | A+ |
| Envoy Air | 627 | 88.6% | 49 min | 1.75% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 649 | 83.2% | 121 min | 2.62% | B |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 88.6%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on XNA to CLT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Bentonville to Charlotte
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. XNA → CLTBentonville to Charlotte | Envoy Air | 87.0% | 88.6% | 1.75% | 5am–8am, Tue | MQ 3871 08:55 |
| 2. XNA → CLTBentonville to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 81.0% | 83.2% | 2.62% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 16 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am268 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am498 flights91.0%
- 11am–2pm371 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm72 flights80.3%
- 5pm–8pm274 flights74.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.0% of the time, against 74.6% for the evening window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 498 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,483 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 81.2% on time, 12 points below October, the best at 93.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 143 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.6%. 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. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 21,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
37% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 21,145 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 9,321 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.4% 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 754 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 81.7% on time across 1,482 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,483 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CLT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 74.6% on time against 91.0% for the 8am–11am slot, and that 16 points is the largest single thing you control here. Envoy Air is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,452 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
XNA to CLT questions
How often is XNA to CLT delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.7% of the 1,483 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on XNA to CLT?
Envoy Air leads at 88.6% on time across 627 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 83.2%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on XNA to CLT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.6%, 16 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 XNA to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 81.2% on time, compared with 93.0% in October. Across the year that is 12 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 XNA — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on XNA to CLT88.8%
- Envoy Air on XNA to CLT88.6%
- PSA Airlines on XNA to CLT83.2%
- XNA to DFW, a related route78.7%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- XNA to ORD, a related route75.9%
- American Airlines on-time record88.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record83.2%
- 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. XNA to CLT and CLT to XNA 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.