Route reliability record
BWI→FLL
Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 3,168
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 925 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,168 BWI to FLL flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 687 at 78.0% on time.
Best time to fly BWI to FLL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.6%, against 74.5% 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
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,079 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Spirit
78.0% on time across 687 flights
These figures cover 3,168 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BWI to FLL
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 687 | 78.0% | 63 min | 4.66% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,124 | 75.7% | 55 min | 1.69% | B |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 160 | 71.5% | 81 min | 5.00% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 197 | 51.3% | 90 min | 5.08% | F− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.7% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → FLLWashington to Fort Lauderdale | United Airlines | 83.0% | 83.5% | 0.57% | 8am–11am, Wed | UA 1825 08:15 |
| 2. BWI → MIABaltimore to Miami | American Airlines | 78.8% | 80.6% | 2.29% | 5am–8am, Thu | AA 1183 06:00 |
| 3. BWI → PBIBaltimore to West Palm Beach | Southwest Airlines | 77.3% | 78.5% | 1.58% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. DCA → MIAWashington to Miami | American Airlines | 75.9% | 77.7% | 2.28% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. DCA → PBIWashington to West Palm Beach | American Airlines | 75.4% | 76.8% | 1.85% | 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 30 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am660 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am778 flights80.1%
- 11am–2pm370 flights70.9%
- 2pm–5pm509 flights68.4%
- 5pm–8pm598 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am253 flights59.6%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.6% on time, against 89.9% for the 5am–8am 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 778 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BWI to FLL 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 FLL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.6%, a wide gap of 30.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.9%
- 8–11am80.1%
- 11am–2pm70.9%
- 2–5pm68.4%
- 5–8pm64.4%
- 8pm–5am59.6%
best all US flightsScale 50% 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.
December is the weak month at 59.6% on time, against 84.1% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 305 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.6%, a spread of 21 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 49,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 49,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 48,712 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.71%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.3% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 925 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 71.0% on time across 3,150 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,168 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 FLL 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. September runs 84.1% on time and December 59.6%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,079 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to FLL questions
How often is BWI to FLL delayed?
About 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 25.5% of the 3,168 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BWI to FLL?
Spirit Airlines leads at 78.0% on time across 687 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.7%, a gap of 2 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 FLL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.6%, 30 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 FLL?
December is the weakest month at 59.6% on time, compared with 84.1% in September. 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
- FLL to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on BWI to FLL78.0%
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to FLL75.7%
- JetBlue Airways on BWI to FLL71.5%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to FLL51.3%
- BWI to ATL, a related route79.9%
- ATL to FLL, a related route70.7%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record78.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.7%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BWI to FLL and FLL 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.