Carrier route record

NKBWI→DFW

Spirit Airlines · Baltimore to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 126
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
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 DFW 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 126 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's BWI to DFW record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 125 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.0%

Every carrier on BWI to DFW, 1,335 flights

These figures cover 126 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 DFW

Spirit flew 126 of the 1,335 flights on BWI to DFW, about 9% of it. Its 84.8% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to Frontier at 64.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BWI to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	3	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	126	84.8%	86 min	0.00%	B+
American Airlines	938	72.2%	99 min	3.52%	C−
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	268	64.8%	104 min	2.61%	D

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 126 flights.

5am–8am35 flights91.4%
8am–11am34 flights88.2%
11am–2pm30 flights—
2pm–5pm8 flights—
5pm–8pm11 flights—
8pm–5am8 flights—

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

Spirit on BWI to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 202575 flights86.5%
Oct–Dec 202544 flights79.5%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—

Scale runs 70% 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 84.8% on time across 126 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on BWI to DFW logged 75 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 44 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

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 1,624 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
37%
Carrier
27%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
2%

37% 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 608 minutes out of 1,624, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,624 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,217 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 71.7% on time across 121 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 126 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 DFW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 126 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 84.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 125 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