Carrier route record
AADFW→ILM
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Wilmington
- Flights
- 596
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 83%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to ILM draws a D−. Roughly 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 596 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to ILM runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 143 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 572 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.4%
Every carrier on DFW to ILM, 718 flights
These figures cover 596 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.4% 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
American against every carrier on DFW to ILM
American flew 596 of the 718 flights on DFW to ILM, most of the route. Its 63.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.4% to American at 63.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 596 | 63.3% | 88 min | 3.86% | D− |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
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 596 flights.
- 5am–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm306 flights67.5%
- 2pm–5pm5 flights—
- 5pm–8pm279 flights57.8%
- 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: 57.8% on time, against 67.5% 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 306 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to ILM through the year
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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 53.0%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 19,000 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
62% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 18,542 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.4% 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 79.7% on time across 595 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 596 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on DFW to ILM
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.86% 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. 572 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.