Route reliability record
BWI→TPA
Baltimore to Tampa
- Flights
- 2,651
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 842 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 2,651 BWI to TPA flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to TPA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.0%, against 78.1% 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
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,588 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.04%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.3% on time across 2,287 flights
These figures cover 2,651 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 TPA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 27 | 92.3% | 45 min | 3.70% | A− |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,287 | 78.3% | 58 min | 1.84% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 75.8% | 87 min | 3.26% | B− |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Tampa
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 → TPAWashington to Tampa | United Airlines | 83.2% | 83.6% | 0.45% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 683 09:00 |
| 2. BWI → SRQBaltimore to Sarasota | Southwest Airlines | 78.6% | 80.1% | 1.92% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DCA → TPAWashington to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 76.9% | 78.8% | 2.44% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. BWI → TPABaltimore to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 76.9% | 78.3% | 1.84% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. DCA → TPAWashington to Tampa | American Airlines | 69.3% | 71.3% | 2.76% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am411 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am549 flights88.8%
- 11am–2pm402 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm471 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm569 flights67.7%
- 8pm–5am249 flights62.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 93.3% for the 5am–8am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 569 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BWI to TPA 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 TPA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.1%, a wide gap of 31.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.3%
- 8–11am88.8%
- 11am–2pm74.2%
- 2–5pm76.4%
- 5–8pm67.7%
- 8pm–5am62.1%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
August is the worst month at 62.4% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 89.5%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 266 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.3%, a spread of 17 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 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 34,914 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.04% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, 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 842 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 81.9% on time across 2,626 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 2,651 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 TPA 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 89.5% on time and August 62.4%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,588 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to TPA questions
How often is BWI to TPA delayed?
Roughly 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 21.9% of the 2,651 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
78.1% 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 TPA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.1%, 31 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 August delays on BWI to TPA?
August is the weakest month at 62.4% on time, compared with 89.5% in September. Across the year that is 27 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
- TPA to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to TPA78.3%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to TPA75.8%
- BWI to ATL, a related route79.9%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.0%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record92.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.8%
- 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 TPA and TPA 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.