Route reliability record
BWI→SAV
Baltimore to Savannah
- Flights
- 994
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 548 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 994 BWI to SAV flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to SAV: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.6%, against 81.2% 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
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 983 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.2% on time across 994 flights
These figures cover 994 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BWI to SAV
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 | 994 | 81.2% | 66 min | 0.91% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Savannah
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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BWI → SAVBaltimore to Savannah | Southwest Airlines | 80.5% | 81.2% | 0.91% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DCA → SAVWashington to Savannah | PSA Airlines | 65.1% | 68.1% | 4.43% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
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 34 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–11am365 flights93.9%
- 11am–2pm59 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm191 flights78.7%
- 5pm–8pm244 flights76.4%
- 8pm–5am135 flights60.3%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.3% on time, against 93.9% 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 365 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.
July is the worst month at 60.8% on time, 30 points below April, the best at 90.3%. 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 97 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.3%. 15 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 44% of the 12,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
44% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 12,188 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 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.2% 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 548 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 runs 81.2% on time across 993 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 994 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SAV after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 994 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 81.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 983 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to SAV questions
How often is BWI to SAV 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 18.8% of the 994 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to SAV compared with the rest of the country?
81.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 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 SAV?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.3%, 34 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 SAV?
July is the weakest month at 60.8% on time, compared with 90.3% in April. 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
- SAV to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route80.6%
- ATL to SAV, a related route83.5%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.2%
- 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 SAV and SAV 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.