Raleigh to Wilmington, in one car.
Two hours of coastal highway, door to door. It is the run people take when the flight lands at RDU instead of ILM, when the beach house is the destination rather than a hotel, or when a wedding party needs to reach the coast together and nobody wants to drive.
- Journey time
- ≈ 2 hrs
- Airports served
- RDU · ILM
- Vehicles
- Up to 14 passengers
- Direction
- Both ways
The case for driving Wilmington.
No hire car at the other end
A beach week rarely needs a car once you arrive, and a rental sits on a driveway for six days earning parking tickets. Arrive driven, leave driven.
Luggage for a fortnight, not an afternoon
Coastal trips travel heavy. The Sprinter takes fourteen passengers and twenty bags, which is the difference between one vehicle and three.
The whole party arrives together
Wedding groups and families reach the house at one time, in one mood, without a convoy of cars trying to hold formation on the highway.
What to know before you book.
When RDU beats ILM
Wilmington International is small, quick to clear and often the right answer. But it has fewer routes, and a connection through RDU is frequently cheaper or simply the only sensible option — at which point the ground leg becomes two hours rather than fifteen minutes. We run that leg as a normal service rather than an exception.
Where on the coast we go
Downtown Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach, Figure Eight Island, Bald Head Island, Leland and across Brunswick and Pender counties, including Hampstead. If the address is on that stretch of coast, the run is routine.
Weddings and long weekends
Coastal weddings move people in waves — the party on Friday, the guests on Saturday, everyone home on Sunday. We plan those as one schedule rather than as separate bookings that happen to share a postcode.