Route reliability record

BWI→FLL

Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 3,108
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 925 mi
Carriers: 3

This route lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrive 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 3,108 flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 847 at 78.5% on time.

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.

On time

76.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,030 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.41%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Spirit

78.5% on time across 847 flights

These figures cover 3,108 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 FLL

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BWI to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines	847	78.5%	68 min	3.90%	B−
Southwest Airlines	2,126	75.9%	57 min	1.51%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	135	61.6%	87 min	7.41%	D−

Spirit Airlines cancels 3.9% 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.

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 29 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am660 flights89.7%
8am–11am704 flights80.7%
11am–2pm384 flights80.0%
2pm–5pm483 flights68.2%
5pm–8pm599 flights66.6%
8pm–5am278 flights60.6%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 89.7% 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 704 flights scheduled in it.

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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.6%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 45,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
26%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
1%

40% 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 45,000 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 44,665 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 89.7% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.41% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

7.8% 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 are the about an hour kind, 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. 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 runs 73.2% on time across 3,101 flights, within 3 points 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 3,108 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.

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. 3,030 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.0% of the 3,108 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on BWI to FLL?

Spirit Airlines leads at 78.5% on time across 847 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.9%, a gap of 3 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 89.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.6%, 29 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.

Where to go next

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.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures