Carrier route record

WNBWI→TPA

Southwest Airlines · Baltimore to Tampa

Flights: 2,320
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 85%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on BWI to TPA lands a B, 2 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 2,320 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 Southwest on BWI to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,277 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.55%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.8%

Every carrier on BWI to TPA, 2,721 flights

These figures cover 2,320 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

Southwest against every carrier on BWI to TPA

Southwest flew 2,320 of the 2,721 flights on BWI to TPA, most of the route. Its 79.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 79.3% to Frontier at 76.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BWI to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	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

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 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–8am376 flights92.7%
8am–11am495 flights88.6%
11am–2pm289 flights77.3%
2pm–5pm459 flights77.3%
5pm–8pm535 flights67.9%
8pm–5am166 flights66.7%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 66.7% for the overnight window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 535 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on BWI to TPA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 69.6% on time, 20 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. May was the busiest month here, with 228 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.0%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

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 28,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
10%
Security
1%

37% 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 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 28,052 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,560 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.4% 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 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 80.8% on time across 2,315 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 2,320 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 Southwest on BWI to TPA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.5% on time and July 69.6%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,277 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures