Carrier route record
NKATL→BWI
Spirit Airlines · Atlanta to Baltimore
- Flights
- 138
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 3%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on ATL to BWI lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 138 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,569 at 78.8% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.8% on time across 1,569 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 135 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on ATL to BWI, 5,414 flights
These figures cover 138 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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
Spirit against every carrier on ATL to BWI
Spirit flew 138 of the 5,414 flights on ATL to BWI, about 3% of it. Its 77.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 78.8% to Frontier at 61.1%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 78.8% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 61.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 883 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,569 | 78.8% | 63 min | 2.10% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,824 | 78.3% | 59 min | 1.95% | B |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 138 | 77.8% | 63 min | 1.45% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 883 | 61.1% | 70 min | 1.93% | D |
The spread between Southwest and Frontier is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Spirit runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am8 flights—
- 8am–11am10 flights—
- 11am–2pm45 flights70.5%
- 2pm–5pm43 flights100.0%
- 5pm–8pm20 flights—
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 70.5% on time against 100.0% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 45 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on ATL to BWI through the year
- Jul–Sep 202582 flights81.5%
- Oct–Dec 202556 flights72.2%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 77.8% on time across 138 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on ATL to BWI logged 82 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 56 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 77.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 1,893 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
42% 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 1,893 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 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 1,893 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 671 minutes out of 1,893, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.72%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 577 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.3% on time across 135 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 138 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.
What to do with this
Booking Spirit on ATL to BWI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 138 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 135 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to BWI, every carrier
- Spirit on BWI to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to BWI78.8%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to BWI78.3%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to BWI61.1%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.