Route reliability record
BWI→ROC
Baltimore to Rochester
- Flights
- 1,104
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 277 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,104 BWI to ROC flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly BWI to ROC: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.3% of the time and Friday flights 78.7%, against 75.2% 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
75.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,086 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.2% on time across 1,104 flights
These figures cover 1,104 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BWI to ROC
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 | 1,104 | 75.2% | 49 min | 1.45% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Rochester
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BWI → BUFBaltimore to Buffalo | Southwest Airlines | 75.0% | 76.4% | 1.78% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. BWI → ROCBaltimore to Rochester | Southwest Airlines | 74.1% | 75.2% | 1.45% | 11am–2pm, Fri | — |
| 3. DCA → ROCWashington to Rochester | PSA Airlines | 63.3% | 67.2% | 5.82% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 4. DCA → BUFWashington to Buffalo | PSA Airlines | 61.5% | 64.6% | 4.80% | 8am–11am, 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 22 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–8am—
- 8am–11am282 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm129 flights85.3%
- 2pm–5pm301 flights79.1%
- 5pm–8pm27 flights—
- 8pm–5am365 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 85.3% for the 11am–2pm 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 63.2% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 91.1%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.1%. 9 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 48% of the 13,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 13,098 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 277 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.4% on time across 1,104 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,104 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 ROC 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. September runs 91.1% on time and July 63.2%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,086 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to ROC questions
How often is BWI to ROC delayed?
About 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 24.8% of the 1,104 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BWI to ROC compared with the rest of the country?
75.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BWI to ROC?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.6%, 22 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 ROC?
July is the weakest month at 63.2% on time, compared with 91.1% in September. Across the year that is 28 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
- ROC to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route80.6%
- ORD to ROC, a related route74.2%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.2%
- 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 ROC and ROC to BWI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed BWI to ROC’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.