Route reliability record
CLT→ILM
Charlotte to Wilmington
- Flights
- 1,828
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 185 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,828 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 89.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.0%, against 77.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
77.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,790 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.02%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
76.6% on time across 1,484 flights
These figures cover 1,828 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 | 343 | 79.7% | 73 min | 2.33% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,484 | 76.6% | 72 min | 1.95% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 75 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am114 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am205 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm340 flights85.9%
- 2pm–5pm114 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm455 flights74.0%
- 8pm–5am600 flights69.4%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.7% of the time, against 69.4% for the overnight 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 600 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to ILM by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CLT to ILM, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 89.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 69.4%, a wide gap of 20.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am85.8%
- 8–11am89.7%
- 11am–2pm85.9%
- 2–5pm72.7%
- 5–8pm74.0%
- 8pm–5am69.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 64.8% on time, 19 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 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.5%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 30,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 29,562 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 89.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 87.2% on time across 1,826 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 1,828 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 64.8%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,790 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to ILM questions
How often is CLT to ILM delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.8% of the 1,828 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
77.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. 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 89.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 69.4%, 20 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 64.8% on time, compared with 84.2% in November. Across the year that is 19 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 ILM79.7%
- American Airlines on CLT to ILM76.6%
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- ATL to ILM, a related route83.9%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record79.7%
- American Airlines on-time record76.6%
- 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 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.