Route reliability record
ILM→DCA
Wilmington to Washington
- Flights
- 879
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 320 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 8.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 879 ILM to DCA flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly ILM to DCA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.0% of the time and Saturday flights 83.5%, against 66.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 104 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 798 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.42%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
65.7% on time across 788 flights
These figures cover 879 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ILM to DCA
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 Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 88 | 75.9% | 71 min | 5.68% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 788 | 65.7% | 90 min | 8.76% | C− |
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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 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am339 flights85.0%
- 11am–2pm53 flights72.5%
- 2pm–5pm135 flights45.9%
- 5pm–8pm263 flights56.3%
- 8pm–5am73 flights42.4%
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.4% on time, against 85.0% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 339 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ILM to DCA 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 DCA, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 85.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 42.4%, a wide gap of 42.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am85.0%
- 11am–2pm72.5%
- 2–5pm45.9%
- 5–8pm56.3%
- 8pm–5am42.4%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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 51.9% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 83.0%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.6%, a spread of 25 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 18%Extreme weather
- 5%Carrier
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,414 reported delay minutes.
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 8.42%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
14.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 320 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.3% on time across 879 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 879 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.42% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 798 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ILM to DCA questions
How often is ILM to DCA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.1% of the 879 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ILM to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
66.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ILM to DCA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 42.4%, 43 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 DCA?
July is the weakest month at 51.9% on time, compared with 83.0% in September. Across the year that is 31 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
- DCA to ILM — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- ILM to CLT, a related route87.2%
- BOS to DCA, a related route72.6%
- ILM to ATL, a related route87.4%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record65.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ILM to DCA and DCA 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.