Route reliability record
BDL→BWI
Hartford to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,724
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 283 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,724 BDL to BWI flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly BDL to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.5%, against 82.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,686 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.6% on time across 1,724 flights
These figures cover 1,724 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 BDL 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 | 1,724 | 82.6% | 55 min | 1.80% | B |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Hartford 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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BDL → IADHartford to Washington | United Airlines | 84.0% | 85.3% | 1.49% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 635 06:00 |
| 2. BDL → BWIHartford to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 81.1% | 82.6% | 1.80% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. BDL → DCAHartford to Washington | Republic Airways | 72.0% | 73.6% | 2.23% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. BDL → DCAHartford to Washington | PSA Airlines | 62.1% | 67.5% | 8.01% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am410 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am353 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm395 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm410 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm156 flights66.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.9% of the time, against 66.4% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 410 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BDL 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 BDL to BWI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 66.4%, a wide gap of 26.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.9%
- 8–11am92.5%
- 11am–2pm78.9%
- 2–5pm73.0%
- 5–8pm66.4%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 67.8% on time, against 90.9% in May. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 154 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 16,246 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 92.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.41%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 283 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 81.2% on time across 1,723 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 1,724 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. May runs 90.9% on time and December 67.8%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,686 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to BWI questions
How often is BDL to BWI delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.4% of the 1,724 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BDL to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
82.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BDL to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.4%, 27 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 BDL to BWI?
December is the weakest month at 67.8% on time, compared with 90.9% in May. Across the year that is 23 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 BDL — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- BDL to ORD, a related route75.9%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- BDL to ATL, a related route84.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.6%
- 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. BDL to BWI and BWI to BDL 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.