Route reliability record
BWI→ATL
Baltimore to Atlanta
- Flights
- 5,405
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 577 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 5,405 BWI to ATL flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 2,790 at 86.0% on time.
Best time to fly BWI to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.0%, against 79.9% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.0% on time across 2,790 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,263 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.33%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
86.0% on time across 2,790 flights
These figures cover 5,405 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 BWI to ATL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.0% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 973 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 83 | 87.8% | 74 min | 1.20% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,790 | 86.0% | 85 min | 2.11% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,559 | 76.4% | 54 min | 1.54% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 973 | 66.8% | 71 min | 4.32% | C− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 4.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on BWI to ATL
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Atlanta
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BWI → ATLBaltimore to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 84.2% | 86.0% | 2.11% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2950 06:00 |
| 2. IAD → ATLWashington to Atlanta | United Airlines | 79.3% | 79.9% | 0.73% | 8am–11am, Sat | UA 2739 08:15 |
| 3. IAD → ATLWashington to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 77.6% | 79.9% | 2.82% | 5am–8am, Thu | DL 2127 06:00 |
| 4. DCA → ATLWashington to Atlanta | Delta Air Lines | 77.2% | 79.2% | 2.55% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 410 06:00 |
| 5. DCA → ATLWashington to Atlanta | Southwest Airlines | 76.9% | 78.9% | 2.51% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 39 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,161 flights86.8%
- 8am–11am1,256 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm780 flights79.7%
- 2pm–5pm799 flights82.2%
- 5pm–8pm1,154 flights67.8%
- 8pm–5am255 flights50.2%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.2% on time, against 88.9% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,256 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BWI to ATL 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 BWI to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 88.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 50.2%, a wide gap of 38.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am86.8%
- 8–11am88.9%
- 11am–2pm79.7%
- 2–5pm82.2%
- 5–8pm67.8%
- 8pm–5am50.2%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
July is the worst month at 65.8% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 89.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 502 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.2%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 74,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 74,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 74,442 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 88.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.33% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 a little over 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.2% on time across 5,402 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 5,405 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 ATL 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. February runs 89.4% on time and July 65.8%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 5,263 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to ATL questions
How often is BWI to ATL delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.1% of the 5,405 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BWI to ATL?
Delta Air Lines leads at 86.0% on time across 2,790 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 66.8%, a gap of 19 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BWI to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.2%, 39 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 July delays on BWI to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 65.8% on time, compared with 89.4% in February. Across the year that is 24 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
- ATL to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on BWI to ATL86.0%
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to ATL76.4%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to ATL66.8%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.5%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- BWI to BOS, a related route74.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record87.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. BWI to ATL and ATL to BWI 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.