Route reliability record
BWI→MHT
Baltimore to Manchester
- Flights
- 1,726
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 377 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,726 BWI to MHT flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to MHT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.0%, against 83.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,705 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.0% on time across 1,726 flights
These figures cover 1,726 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 MHT
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 | 1,726 | 83.0% | 60 min | 1.10% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Manchester
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. BWI → MHTBaltimore to Manchester | Southwest Airlines | 82.1% | 83.0% | 1.10% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. BWI → BOSBaltimore to Boston | Republic Airways | 78.3% | 80.8% | 3.13% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 5644 19:59 |
| 3. IAD → BOSWashington to Boston | United Airlines | 75.9% | 77.4% | 1.92% | 8am–11am, Sat (route) | UA 641 09:00 |
| 4. DCA → BOSWashington to Boston | Republic Airways | 74.6% | 77.9% | 4.22% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 5698 06:59 |
| 5. BWI → BOSBaltimore to Boston | Southwest Airlines | 70.7% | 72.4% | 2.36% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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–8am344 flights96.5%
- 8am–11am222 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm275 flights88.9%
- 2pm–5pm284 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm211 flights69.1%
- 8pm–5am390 flights70.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.5% of the time, against 69.1% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 390 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
July is the worst month at 62.7% on time, 27 points below January, the best at 89.8%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 153 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.2%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 17,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
54% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 17,256 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 5,929 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.6% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 377 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.7% on time across 1,727 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,726 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 MHT 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. January runs 89.8% on time and July 62.7%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,705 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to MHT questions
How often is BWI to MHT delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.0% of the 1,726 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to MHT compared with the rest of the country?
83.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BWI to MHT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.1%, 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 July delays on BWI to MHT?
July is the weakest month at 62.7% on time, compared with 89.8% in January. Across the year that is 27 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
- MHT to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route80.6%
- DCA to MHT, a related route68.5%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.0%
- 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 MHT and MHT 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.