Route reliability record
ILM→CLT
Wilmington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,826
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 185 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 close to two hours. That rests on 1,826 ILM to CLT flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly ILM to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.7%, against 87.2% 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 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,785 completed flights
Avg delay
110 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
87.7% on time across 1,484 flights
These figures cover 1,826 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 CLT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,484 | 87.7% | 113 min | 2.16% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 341 | 85.6% | 100 min | 2.35% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 70 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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am612 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am314 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm215 flights90.2%
- 2pm–5pm266 flights84.9%
- 5pm–8pm221 flights77.8%
- 8pm–5am198 flights75.4%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 75.4% for the overnight 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 612 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ILM to CLT 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 CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 75.4%, a wide gap of 18.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.7%
- 8–11am88.3%
- 11am–2pm90.2%
- 2–5pm84.9%
- 5–8pm77.8%
- 8pm–5am75.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
August is the worst month at 77.0% on time, 15 points below April, the best at 91.9%. 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 231 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 84.5%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 25,088 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.19% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.4% 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 close to two hours, 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.2% on time across 1,828 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,826 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 CLT 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. April runs 91.9% on time and August 77.0%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,785 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ILM to CLT questions
How often is ILM to CLT 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 12.8% of the 1,826 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ILM to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
87.2% 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 CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 75.4%, 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 August delays on ILM to CLT?
August is the weakest month at 77.0% on time, compared with 91.9% in April. Across the year that is 15 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
- CLT to ILM — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on ILM to CLT87.7%
- PSA Airlines on ILM to CLT85.6%
- ILM to ATL, a related route87.4%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- ILM to LGA, a related route76.2%
- American Airlines on-time record87.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record85.6%
- 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. ILM to CLT and CLT 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.