Carrier route record

NKBWI→ATL

Spirit Airlines · Baltimore to Atlanta

Flights: 135
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 2%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on BWI to ATL earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 135 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,824 at 86.2% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.2% on time across 2,824 flights.

On time

84.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 134 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.74%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.6%

Every carrier on BWI to ATL, 5,415 flights

These figures cover 135 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.

Carrier by carrier

Spirit against every carrier on BWI to ATL

Spirit flew 135 of the 5,415 flights on BWI to ATL, about 2% of it. Its 84.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.2% to Frontier at 68.0%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.2% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 68.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 883 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BWI to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,824	86.2%	79 min	2.05%	A
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	135	84.3%	67 min	0.74%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,573	77.4%	60 min	1.34%	B
Frontier Airlines	883	68.0%	71 min	2.38%	C

The spread between Delta 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 16 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am38 flights81.6%
11am–2pm35 flights94.3%
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm53 flights78.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 94.3% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 78.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 53 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on BWI to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 202580 flights82.5%
Oct–Dec 202555 flights87.0%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 84.3% on time across 135 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on BWI to ATL logged 80 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 55 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 84.3% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 1,406 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.

National Airspace System
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
43%
Carrier
12%
Extreme weather
0%

43% 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 1,406 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 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 1,406 reported delay minutes.

45% 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 627 minutes out of 1,406, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.74%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.

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 77.8% on time across 138 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 135 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 BWI to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 135 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 84.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 134 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures