Route reliability record
ILM→CLT
Wilmington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,838
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,838 ILM to CLT flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly ILM to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.3%, against 87.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,799 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
88.3% on time across 1,513 flights
These figures cover 1,838 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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.
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 | 1,513 | 88.3% | 101 min | 2.12% | A |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 324 | 86.2% | 77 min | 1.54% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 70 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am619 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am331 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm224 flights89.7%
- 2pm–5pm249 flights86.9%
- 5pm–8pm236 flights78.2%
- 8pm–5am179 flights77.0%
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 94.3% of the time, against 77.0% for the overnight window. That is 17 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 619 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,838 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
July is the worst month at 82.2% on time, 10 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 90.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.8%. 6 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. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 21,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 20,995 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,695 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 78.3% on time across 1,840 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 1,838 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: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 77.0% on time against 94.3% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 17 points is the largest single thing you control here. American Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,799 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 12.1% of the 1,838 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ILM to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
87.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 94.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 77.0%, 17 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 CLT?
July is the weakest month at 82.2% on time, compared with 91.9% in April. Across the year that is 10 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 CLT88.3%
- PSA Airlines on ILM to CLT86.2%
- ILM to ATL, a related route87.6%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- ILM to LGA, a related route77.8%
- American Airlines on-time record88.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record86.2%
- 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 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.