Carrier route record
AAILM→CLT
American Airlines · Wilmington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,513
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ILM to CLT 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,513 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's ILM to CLT record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 107 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,479 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
87.9%
Every carrier on ILM to CLT, 1,838 flights
These figures cover 1,513 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on ILM to CLT
American flew 1,513 of the 1,838 flights on ILM to CLT, most of the route. Its 88.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 88.3% to Envoy at 0.0%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 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
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 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–8am569 flights94.1%
- 8am–11am327 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm120 flights85.8%
- 2pm–5pm213 flights86.5%
- 5pm–8pm196 flights79.0%
- 8pm–5am88 flights79.1%
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 94.1% of the time, against 79.0% for the evening window. That is 15 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 569 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ILM to CLT through the year
July is the worst month at 81.7% on time, 12 points below April, the best at 93.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 166 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 85.6%. 4 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. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 18,000 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.
- 51%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 17,546 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 9,017 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% 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 78.0% on time across 1,513 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 1,513 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on ILM to CLT
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 79.0% on time against 94.1% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 15 points is the largest single thing you control here. 1,479 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ILM to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to ILM, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on ILM to CLT86.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.