Route reliability record
BWI→TPA
Baltimore to Tampa
- Flights
- 2,721
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 842 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 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 2,721 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
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
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,663 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.3% on time across 2,320 flights
These figures cover 2,721 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,320 | 79.3% | 59 min | 1.55% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 76.9% | 74 min | 4.35% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 332 | 76.0% | 84 min | 3.31% | B− |
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 29 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–8am428 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am614 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm360 flights76.9%
- 2pm–5pm481 flights77.0%
- 5pm–8pm597 flights68.1%
- 8pm–5am241 flights63.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.1% on time, against 92.2% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 614 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 70.1% on time, 19 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.9%. 16 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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% 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 36,000 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 35,588 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 are the about an hour kind, 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. 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 80.5% on time across 2,717 flights, within 2 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 2,721 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.
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 July 70.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,663 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to TPA questions
How often is BWI to TPA delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.2% of the 2,721 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
78.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 92.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.1%, 29 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 TPA?
July is the weakest month at 70.1% on time, compared with 89.5% in September. Across the year that is 19 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-time record79.3%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record76.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.0%
- 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 TPA and TPA to BWI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.