Route reliability record
AUS→BWI
Austin to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,273
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,342 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,273 AUS to BWI flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly AUS to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.2%, against 76.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,246 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.0% on time across 1,273 flights
These figures cover 1,273 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to BWI
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,273 | 76.0% | 49 min | 1.65% | B |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin to Baltimore
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AUS → IADAustin to Washington | United Airlines | 89.4% | 90.1% | 0.81% | 5am–8am, Tue (route) | UA 525 07:15 |
| 2. AUS → BWIAustin to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 74.7% | 76.0% | 1.65% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 52 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am372 flights97.8%
- 8am–11am152 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm239 flights76.1%
- 2pm–5pm341 flights58.0%
- 5pm–8pm112 flights45.8%
- 8pm–5am57 flights71.9%
Scale runs 35% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 45.8% on time, against 97.8% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 372 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter AUS to BWI 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 AUS to BWI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 45.8%, a wide gap of 52.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.8%
- 8–11am86.2%
- 11am–2pm76.1%
- 2–5pm58.0%
- 5–8pm45.8%
- 8pm–5am71.9%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 64.5%. January is the strongest month at 90.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. July was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.2%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 14,535 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 97.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.65% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.47%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,342 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.
The return leg runs 77.0% on time across 1,254 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,273 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BWI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 90.7% on time and March 64.5%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,246 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to BWI questions
How often is AUS to BWI 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 24.0% of the 1,273 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is AUS to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
76.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AUS to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 45.8%, 52 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 March delays on AUS to BWI?
March is the weakest month at 64.5% on time, compared with 90.7% in January. Across the year that is 26 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
- BWI to AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.9%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- AUS to DFW, a related route74.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. AUS to BWI and BWI to AUS 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.