Carrier route record

NKBWI→LAX

Spirit Airlines · Baltimore to Los Angeles

Flights: 106
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on BWI to LAX earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 106 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 576 at 85.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's BWI to LAX record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 104 completed flights

Avg delay

104 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.89%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.4%

Every carrier on BWI to LAX, 1,727 flights

These figures cover 106 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 22 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 LAX

Spirit flew 106 of the 1,727 flights on BWI to LAX, about 6% of it. Its 87.5% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.5% to Southwest at 67.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 85.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 67.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,045 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BWI to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	106	87.5%	104 min	1.89%	A
United Airlines	576	85.0%	89 min	1.22%	A
Southwest Airlines	1,045	67.2%	49 min	1.24%	C

The spread between United and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am64 flights93.7%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm35 flights76.5%
8pm–5am7 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 76.5% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 64 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on BWI to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202590 flights88.6%
Oct–Dec 202516 flights—

Scale runs 80% to 95%. 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 87.5% on time across 106 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on BWI to LAX logged 90 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 16 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 87.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 1,345 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

National Airspace System
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Extreme weather
12%
Carrier
10%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,345 reported delay minutes.

36% 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 1,345 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.89% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 2,329 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.0% on time across 109 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. 106 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 LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 106 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 87.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 104 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