Route reliability record
BWI→PBI
Baltimore to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 1,233
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 883 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,233 BWI to PBI flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to PBI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.4%, against 77.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,214 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.7% on time across 1,233 flights
These figures cover 1,233 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 PBI
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 | 1,233 | 77.7% | 59 min | 1.30% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to West Palm Beach
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. IAD → FLLWashington to Fort Lauderdale | United Airlines | 83.9% | 84.4% | 0.56% | 8am–11am, Tue (route) | UA 1825 08:15 |
| 2. BWI → PBIBaltimore to West Palm Beach | Southwest Airlines | 76.7% | 77.7% | 1.30% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DCA → PBIWashington to West Palm Beach | American Airlines | 75.8% | 77.2% | 1.79% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. BWI → FLLBaltimore to Fort Lauderdale | Spirit Airlines | 75.4% | 78.5% | 3.90% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. BWI → FLLBaltimore to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 74.8% | 75.9% | 1.51% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 30 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–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am369 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm237 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm268 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm255 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am103 flights58.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.0% on time, against 88.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 369 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
December is the weak month at 57.9% on time, against 88.1% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.9%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 15,915 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 6,075 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% 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.
The 883 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.3% on time across 1,233 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,233 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 PBI 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. May runs 88.1% on time and December 57.9%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to PBI questions
How often is BWI to PBI delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.3% of the 1,233 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to PBI compared with the rest of the country?
77.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point 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 PBI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.0%, 30 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 December delays on BWI to PBI?
December is the weakest month at 57.9% on time, compared with 88.1% in May. Across the year that is 30 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
- PBI to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route80.6%
- ATL to PBI, a related route75.7%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.7%
- 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 PBI and PBI 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.