Flight profile · American Airlines
AA494
Charlotte (CLT) to Raleigh–Durham (RDU) · scheduled 11:00 PM – 11:58 PM
How AA494 performs
845 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AA494 arrived on time 64.5% of the time, against 74.2% for all CLT → RDU flights, so this departure is 9.7 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against American Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 9.8 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 845 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AA494 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AA494 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA494 | 64.5% | 2.60% | 4 min | 14.5% | 845 |
| American Airlines on CLT → RDU | 74.3% | 1.54% | -3 min | 9.2% | 10,368 |
| All CLT → RDU flights | 74.2% | 1.56% | -3 min | 9.1% | 10,401 |
AA494 has cancelled 2.60% of its scheduled departures (22 of 845), against 1.56% for all CLT → RDU flights — this specific departure cancels 1.0 percentage points more often than the route as a whole. Different flight numbers on the same route can carry different aircraft, crews and schedules, so this is a fact about AA494 specifically, not about the route it flies.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AA494 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AA494 on CLT → RDU. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies AA494 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AA494 pushed back an average of 56 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 11 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into CLT just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 765 of 823 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA494 | 32% | 70% | 19% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often AA494’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AA494 left 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves CLT late, does that still matter by the time it reaches RDU?
AA494 pushes back an average of 32.1 minutes late and reaches the gate at RDU an average of 27.6 minutes late. The 4.5 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 18.4 minutes on the taxiways at CLT, 4.2 minutes shorter than a typical CLT departure in the same hour.
On arrival at RDU, AA494 spends 6.8 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at RDU spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached RDU. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 3,396 departures from CLT scheduled in the clock hour AA494 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at RDU (179,931 flights), not just AA494’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves CLT
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AA494 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 3,396 departures from CLT are scheduled in the 11 PM–12 AM hour over the period, against 618,243 across the whole day.
AA494 is scheduled out of CLT at 11:00 PM, in the 11 PM–12 AM bank. Departures from CLT in that hour arrive on time 66.8% of the time against 74.8% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 8.0 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from CLT to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
82 min late
against a median of 4 min late
AA494 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 4 min late, but the worst tenth are 78 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 845 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA1906 | American Airlines | 88.2% | 9 min early | 705 |
| AA1895 | American Airlines | 87.7% | 9 min early | 834 |
| AA2688 | American Airlines | 85.0% | 8 min early | 711 |
| AA1897 | American Airlines | 80.7% | 6 min early | 928 |
| AA1894 | American Airlines | 68.0% | 0 min early | 952 |
| AA494 this flight | American Airlines | 64.5% | 4 min late | 845 |
| AA1904 | American Airlines | 63.2% | 4 min late | 959 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AA494 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 845 records of AA494 operating CLT → RDU, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
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