Route reliability record
BWI→CLE
Baltimore to Cleveland
- Flights
- 969
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 314 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 969 BWI to CLE flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to CLE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.7%, against 76.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 949 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.9% on time across 969 flights
These figures cover 969 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Which airline is most reliable on BWI to CLE
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 | 969 | 76.9% | 56 min | 2.06% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Cleveland
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → CLEWashington to Cleveland | United Airlines | 84.2% | 84.7% | 0.56% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. BWI → CLEBaltimore to Cleveland | Southwest Airlines | 75.3% | 76.9% | 2.06% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DCA → CLEWashington to Cleveland | PSA Airlines | 59.2% | 64.4% | 8.03% | 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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am227 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm145 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm98 flights67.7%
- 5pm–8pm136 flights75.2%
- 8pm–5am362 flights71.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.1% of the time, against 67.7% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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 59.5% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 90.7%. 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 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.9%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 12,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 12,208 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 88.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.06% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 314 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.5% on time across 969 flights, 9 points above 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 969 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CLE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 969 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 76.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 949 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to CLE questions
How often is BWI to CLE 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 23.1% of the 969 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
76.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 CLE?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.7%, 20 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 CLE?
July is the weakest month at 59.5% on time, compared with 90.7% in September. Across the year that is 31 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
- CLE to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route80.6%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BWI to CLE and CLE 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.