Route reliability record
ILM→DCA
Wilmington to Washington
- Flights
- 881
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 320 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 881 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 81.9%, against 68.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 815 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
67.1% on time across 808 flights
These figures cover 881 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 69 | 75.8% | 85 min | 4.35% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 808 | 67.1% | 85 min | 6.93% | C− |
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 39 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–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am364 flights85.0%
- 11am–2pm33 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm137 flights46.2%
- 5pm–8pm309 flights54.8%
- 8pm–5am26 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.0% of the time, against 46.2% for the afternoon window. That is 39 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 50.6% on time, 32 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 81.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.5%. 21 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 22,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 6%Carrier
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,293 reported delay minutes.
55% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 6.70%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 73.1% on time across 881 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 881 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 6.70% 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. 815 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 32.0% of the 881 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 DCA compared with the rest of the country?
68.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 46.2%, 39 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 50.6% on time, compared with 83.0% in September. Across the year that is 32 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 route87.9%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- ILM to ATL, a related route87.6%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record67.1%
- 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.
Embed ILM to DCA’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.