Carrier route record
UABWI→LAX
United Airlines · Baltimore to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 576
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BWI to LAX earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 576 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's BWI to LAX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 568 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.4%
Every carrier on BWI to LAX, 1,727 flights
These figures cover 576 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on BWI to LAX
United flew 576 of the 1,727 flights on BWI to LAX, about 33% of it. Its 85.0% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.5% to Southwest at 67.2%. 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 | 106 | 87.5% | 104 min | 1.89% | A |
| United Airlines (this page) | 576 | 85.0% | 89 min | 1.22% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,045 | 67.2% | 49 min | 1.24% | C |
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 13 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–8am302 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am62 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm212 flights77.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.9% of the time, against 77.1% for the evening window. That is 13 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 302 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 90.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.5%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 7,585 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
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 7,585 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 7,585 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 89.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.5% 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 an hour and a half, 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 90.7% on time across 575 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. 576 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. 576 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 85.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 568 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
- Spirit Airlines on BWI to LAX87.5%
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to LAX67.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.