Carrier route record
AAILM→CLT
American Airlines · Wilmington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,484
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 81%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 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 1,484 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's ILM to CLT record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,451 completed flights
Avg delay
113 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.16%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
87.2%
Every carrier on ILM to CLT, 1,826 flights
These figures cover 1,484 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
American against every carrier on ILM to CLT
American flew 1,484 of the 1,826 flights on ILM to CLT, most of the route. Its 87.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 87.7% 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) | 1,484 | 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+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am562 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am310 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm107 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm220 flights85.2%
- 5pm–8pm178 flights78.8%
- 8pm–5am107 flights75.7%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 75.7% 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 562 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ILM to CLT through the year
August is the worst month at 76.0% on time, 18 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 90.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 84.5%, a spread of 6 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on ILM to CLT runs when it is late
American on ILM to CLT often beats the schedule: 640 of 1,451 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 179 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 63 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 75 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early640 flights44.1%
- Within 15 min632 flights43.6%
- 15–29 min late41 flights2.8%
- 30–59 min late63 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late41 flights2.8%
- 2+ hours late34 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,451 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
54 of 218 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. Only 15 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on ILM to CLT
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 December 2025, 37 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 December 2025 | 37 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 July 2026 | 34 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 November 2025 | 24 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 November 2025 | 16 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 October 2025 | 8 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 20,225 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.16% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.2% 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 76.6% on time across 1,484 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,484 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: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 93.5% on time and August 76.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,451 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 CLT85.6%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.