Route reliability record
ILM→ATL
Wilmington to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,149
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 377 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,149 ILM to ATL flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Best time to fly ILM to ATL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.4%, against 87.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,134 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
87.4% on time across 1,149 flights
These figures cover 1,149 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 16 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ILM to ATL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,149 | 87.4% | 77 min | 1.13% | A |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Wilmington to Atlanta
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ILM → ATLWilmington to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 86.4% | 87.4% | 1.13% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. OAJ → ATLJacksonville to Atlanta | SkyWest Airlines | 77.5% | 79.8% | 2.86% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.8%
- 8am–11am194 flights94.8%
- 11am–2pm36 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm333 flights81.0%
- 5pm–8pm221 flights77.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.8% of the time, against 77.5% for the evening 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ILM to ATL 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 ILM to ATL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 77.5%, a wide gap of 18.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.8%
- 8–11am94.8%
- 11am–2pm83.3%
- 2–5pm81.0%
- 5–8pm77.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 79.8% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 96.5%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.5%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,935 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,855 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% 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 377 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.9% on time across 1,149 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,149 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 ATL 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. September runs 96.5% on time and July 79.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,134 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ILM to ATL questions
How often is ILM to ATL delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.6% of the 1,149 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ILM to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
87.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ILM to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 77.5%, 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 ILM to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 79.8% on time, compared with 96.5% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- ATL to ILM — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ILM to CLT, a related route87.2%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- ILM to LGA, a related route76.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record87.4%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ILM to ATL and ATL to ILM 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.