Route reliability record
BWI→PBI
Baltimore to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 1,141
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 883 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,141 BWI to PBI flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to PBI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.4%, against 78.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,120 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.5% on time across 1,141 flights
These figures cover 1,141 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
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 | 1,141 | 78.5% | 58 min | 1.58% | B |
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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 | 83.0% | 83.5% | 0.57% | 8am–11am, Wed | UA 1825 08:15 |
| 2. BWI → PBIBaltimore to West Palm Beach | Southwest Airlines | 77.3% | 78.5% | 1.58% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DCA → PBIWashington to West Palm Beach | American Airlines | 75.4% | 76.8% | 1.85% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. BWI → FLLBaltimore to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 74.4% | 75.7% | 1.69% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. BWI → FLLBaltimore to Fort Lauderdale | Spirit Airlines | 74.4% | 78.0% | 4.66% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am339 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm245 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm221 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm233 flights74.3%
- 8pm–5am102 flights61.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.2% on time, against 88.6% 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 339 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BWI to PBI by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BWI to PBI, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 88.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.2%, a wide gap of 27.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am88.6%
- 11am–2pm78.8%
- 2–5pm74.7%
- 5–8pm74.3%
- 8pm–5am61.2%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 71.2%, a spread of 12 points.
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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 to one. The split is drawn from 13,861 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,306 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.9% 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 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.
The return leg runs 81.2% on time across 1,141 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,141 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. 1,120 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to PBI questions
How often is BWI to PBI delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.5% of the 1,141 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to PBI compared with the rest of the country?
78.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about 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 88.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.2%, 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 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
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route79.9%
- ATL to PBI, a related route75.8%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.