Route reliability record
LGA→ILM
New York to Wilmington
- Flights
- 1,025
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 500 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,025 LGA to ILM flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly LGA to ILM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.8% of the time and Friday flights 79.5%, against 75.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 956 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
75.1% on time across 1,025 flights
These figures cover 1,025 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 LGA to ILM
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,025 | 75.1% | 65 min | 6.63% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on LGA to ILM
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 11 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–8am—
- 8am–11am346 flights78.8%
- 11am–2pm26 flights—
- 2pm–5pm339 flights74.2%
- 5pm–8pm136 flights67.5%
- 8pm–5am178 flights73.0%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 78.8% of the time, against 67.5% for the evening window. That is 11 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 346 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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.
December is the weak month at 49.4% on time, against 88.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. June was the busiest month here, with 99 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.7%. 13 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 54% of the 16,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 15,565 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 78.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.63%, 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. 10.4% 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.
The 500 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 77.8% on time across 1,025 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,025 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 ILM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.63% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 956 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to ILM questions
How often is LGA to ILM delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.9% of the 1,025 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LGA to ILM compared with the rest of the country?
75.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LGA to ILM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 78.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.5%, 11 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 December delays on LGA to ILM?
December is the weakest month at 49.4% on time, compared with 88.3% in September. Across the year that is 39 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
- ILM to LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- CLT to ILM, a related route78.3%
- LGA to ATL, a related route76.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to ILM and ILM to LGA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed LGA to ILM’s on-time badge on your site
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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.