Route reliability record
DFW→ILM
Dallas-Fort Worth to Wilmington
- Flights
- 718
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,106 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 718 DFW to ILM flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 122 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 694 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
63.3% on time across 596 flights
These figures cover 718 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% 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 DFW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 122 | 75.4% | 62 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 596 | 63.3% | 88 min | 3.86% | D− |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 718 flights.
- 5am–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm365 flights69.2%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm342 flights60.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.7% on time, against 69.2% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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.
December is the weak month at 43.3% on time, against 80.3% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 71 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 55.4%. 17 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 60% of the 20,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
60% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 20,391 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.20%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,106 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 80.7% on time across 718 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 718 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ILM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.20% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 694 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ILM questions
How often is DFW to ILM delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.6% of the 718 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DFW to ILM compared with the rest of the country?
65.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to ILM?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 69.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.7%, 9 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 December delays on DFW to ILM?
December is the weakest month at 43.3% on time, compared with 80.3% in May. Across the year that is 37 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to ILM75.4%
- American Airlines on DFW to ILM63.3%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- CLT to ILM, a related route78.3%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.4%
- American Airlines on-time record63.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to ILM and ILM to DFW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DFW to ILM’s on-time badge on your site
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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.