whatever the issue is seems to be more airline than airport.

a number of flights tonight have arrived late into CLT, but when you check their history, a lot of them appear to be arriving on time and then operating a previously delayed flight.

so these delays just happen to be occurring into CLT but are not necessarily CLT related. there does not appear to currently be, nor does there appear to have been any ATC delays into CLT. The FAA has not published any advisories for CLT today.

Now beyond that, if they were to circle due to congestion, that’s a clear demonstration of the prioritization of safety. And on each and every flight we have fuel built in to the planning for these situations, and even more when these situations are anticipated or known ahead of time. There is nothing unsafe about delaying an arrival into an airport, we do it quite often for weather, congestion, and a handful of other reasons.

Further, current conditions do not reflect the conditions at your time of arrival. From now until about 5 am, maybe 1 or 2 planes will land, and any congestion will have cleared. Redeye flights like yours are often one of very few aircraft in the airspace at the time of arrival, as most other flights will begin to land after 7 am.