Route reliability record
BWI→HOU
Baltimore to Houston
- Flights
- 1,453
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,246 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,453 BWI to HOU flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.7%, against 76.3% 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
76.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,429 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.3% on time across 1,453 flights
These figures cover 1,453 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 HOU
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 | 1,453 | 76.3% | 54 min | 1.58% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Houston
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → IAHWashington to Houston | United Airlines | 83.3% | 83.7% | 0.48% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1524 08:30 |
| 2. DCA → IAHWashington to Houston | United Airlines | 83.0% | 83.8% | 0.91% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1450 06:00 |
| 3. BWI → IAHBaltimore to Houston | United Airlines | 82.3% | 83.2% | 1.10% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. DCA → HOUWashington to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 76.1% | 77.5% | 1.80% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
| 5. BWI → HOUBaltimore to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 75.1% | 76.3% | 1.58% | 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 27 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–8am306 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am267 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm165 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm144 flights72.3%
- 5pm–8pm312 flights66.6%
- 8pm–5am259 flights63.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.2% on time, against 90.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 312 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
June is the worst month at 69.4% on time, 17 points below February, the best at 86.6%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.5%. 15 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 18,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
38% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 18,429 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 7,020 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% 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 about 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,246 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 75.4% on time across 1,457 flights, within about a point 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 1,453 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 HOU 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. February runs 86.6% on time and June 69.4%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,429 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to HOU questions
How often is BWI to HOU 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 23.7% of the 1,453 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is BWI to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
76.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about 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 HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.2%, 27 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 June delays on BWI to HOU?
June is the weakest month at 69.4% on time, compared with 86.6% in February. Across the year that is 17 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
- HOU to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route80.6%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.3%
- 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 HOU and HOU 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.