Carrier route record
WNBWI→MSP
Southwest Airlines · Baltimore to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 500
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BWI to MSP draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 500 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on BWI to MSP runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 99 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 485 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.60%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.5%
Every carrier on BWI to MSP, 1,423 flights
These figures cover 500 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on BWI to MSP
Southwest flew 500 of the 1,423 flights on BWI to MSP, about 35% of it. Its 67.4% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.4% to Southwest at 67.4%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 923 | 84.4% | 105 min | 1.84% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 500 | 67.4% | 57 min | 2.60% | C |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 49 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am68 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm102 flights66.0%
- 2pm–5pm94 flights77.4%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights79.8%
- 8pm–5am119 flights36.4%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 36.4% on time, against 85.3% for the 8am–11am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 119 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BWI to MSP through the year
July is the worst month at 40.4% on time, 47 points below November, the best at 87.5%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.0%, a spread of 26 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on BWI to MSP runs when it is late
The 158 late arrivals split 71 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 47 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights16.7%
- Within 15 min246 flights50.7%
- 15–29 min late71 flights14.6%
- 30–59 min late40 flights8.2%
- 1–2 hours late30 flights6.2%
- 2+ hours late17 flights3.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 485 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
43 of 186 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. 15 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on BWI to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 August 2026, 4 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 August 2026 | 4 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 August 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 September 2025 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 3 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 9,076 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,076 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 to one. The split is drawn from 9,076 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.60%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 936 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 496 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 500 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 Southwest on BWI to MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 500 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 67.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 485 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to MSP, every carrier
- Southwest on MSP to BWI, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on BWI to MSP84.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.