Route reliability record
CLT→ILM
Charlotte to Wilmington
- Flights
- 1,840
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 185 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,840 CLT to ILM flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to ILM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.3%, against 78.3% 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
78.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,805 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
78.0% on time across 1,513 flights
These figures cover 1,840 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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 CLT to ILM
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 326 | 80.1% | 75 min | 1.53% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,513 | 78.0% | 68 min | 1.92% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 75 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 18 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–8am130 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am213 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm331 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm114 flights71.8%
- 5pm–8pm445 flights74.2%
- 8pm–5am607 flights72.7%
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 90.0% of the time, against 71.8% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 607 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 68.7% on time, 16 points below November, the best at 84.2%. 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 232 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.3%. 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 56% of the 27,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
56% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 27,183 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.85% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 185 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 87.9% on time across 1,838 flights, 10 points above 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,840 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 ILM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 84.2% on time and July 68.7%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,805 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to ILM questions
How often is CLT to ILM 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 21.7% of the 1,840 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to ILM compared with the rest of the country?
78.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half 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 CLT to ILM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 71.8%, 18 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 CLT to ILM?
July is the weakest month at 68.7% on time, compared with 84.2% in November. Across the year that is 16 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
- ILM to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to ILM80.1%
- American Airlines on CLT to ILM78.0%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ATL to ILM, a related route84.2%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.1%
- American Airlines on-time record78.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record0.0%
- 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. CLT to ILM and ILM to CLT 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.