Route reliability record
BWI→AUS
Baltimore to Austin
- Flights
- 1,254
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,342 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,254 BWI to AUS flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.5%, against 77.0% 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
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,233 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.0% on time across 1,254 flights
These figures cover 1,254 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 AUS
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 | 1,254 | 77.0% | 50 min | 1.67% | B |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Austin
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. IAD → AUSWashington to Austin | United Airlines | 83.8% | 84.5% | 0.81% | 8am–11am, Tue (route) | UA 637 08:25 |
| 2. BWI → AUSBaltimore to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 75.7% | 77.0% | 1.67% | 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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am75 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am435 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm150 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm223 flights68.9%
- 5pm–8pm213 flights65.2%
- 8pm–5am158 flights66.7%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 65.2% for the evening window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 435 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BWI to AUS 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 AUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 65.2%, a wide gap of 28.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.3%
- 8–11am86.9%
- 11am–2pm78.9%
- 2–5pm68.9%
- 5–8pm65.2%
- 8pm–5am66.7%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
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 66.0% on time, against 88.9% in February. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.4%, 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 14,109 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,907 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.67% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.5% 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 about 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 76.0% on time across 1,273 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 1,254 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 AUS 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 88.9% on time and December 66.0%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,233 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to AUS questions
How often is BWI to AUS delayed?
Roughly 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 23.0% of the 1,254 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BWI to AUS compared with the rest of the country?
77.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BWI to AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.2%, 28 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 BWI to AUS?
December is the weakest month at 66.0% on time, compared with 88.9% in February. 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
- AUS to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route79.9%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.2%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.0%
- 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. BWI to AUS and AUS 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.