Carrier route record
WNBWI→FLL
Southwest Airlines · Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 2,126
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 68%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BWI to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,126 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on BWI to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,091 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.0%
Every carrier on BWI to FLL, 3,108 flights
These figures cover 2,126 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
Southwest against every carrier on BWI to FLL
Southwest flew 2,126 of the 3,108 flights on BWI to FLL, most of the route. Its 75.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.5% to Frontier at 61.6%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 847 | 78.5% | 68 min | 3.90% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 2,126 | 75.9% | 57 min | 1.51% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 135 | 61.6% | 87 min | 7.41% | D− |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 38 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–8am356 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am556 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm203 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm413 flights68.3%
- 5pm–8pm443 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am155 flights53.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 92.0% 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 556 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BWI to FLL through the year
December is the weak month at 60.9% on time, against 86.7% 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. January was the busiest month here, with 201 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.2%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest 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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
42% 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 29,000 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 28,625 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 92.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.2% 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.
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 74.2% on time across 2,119 flights, within 2 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 2,126 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 Southwest on BWI to FLL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.7% on time and December 60.9%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,091 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to FLL, every carrier
- Southwest on FLL to BWI, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on BWI to FLL78.5%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to FLL61.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.