Carrier route record
UABWI→LAX
United Airlines · Baltimore to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 578
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BWI to LAX lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 578 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's BWI to LAX record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 572 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.8%
Every carrier on BWI to LAX, 1,670 flights
These figures cover 578 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on BWI to LAX
United flew 578 of the 1,670 flights on BWI to LAX, about 35% of it. Its 83.2% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 91.1% to Southwest at 66.3%. 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 Airlinesthin sample | 46 | 91.1% | 31 min | 2.17% | A |
| United Airlines (this page) | 578 | 83.2% | 77 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,046 | 66.3% | 50 min | 1.53% | C |
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am299 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am65 flights87.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm214 flights74.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.5% of the time, against 74.6% for the evening window. That is 14 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 299 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BWI to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 69.1% on time, 25 points below May, the best at 94.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.3%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on BWI to LAX runs when it is late
United on BWI to LAX often beats the schedule: 173 of 572 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 96 late arrivals split 40 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early173 flights30.2%
- Within 15 min303 flights53.0%
- 15–29 min late40 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late21 flights3.7%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late16 flights2.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 572 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
22 of 81 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 37 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for United on BWI to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 17 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 17 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 June 2026 | 11 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 September 2025 | 5 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 February 2026 | 4 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 4 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United 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 7,358 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,814 of the 7,358 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,358 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 88.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.87%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.1% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 89.1% on time across 577 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 578 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 United on BWI to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 578 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 83.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 572 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to LAX, every carrier
- United on LAX to BWI, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to LAX66.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.