Carrier route record

WNCLT→BWI

Southwest Airlines · Charlotte to Baltimore

Flights: 966
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 32%
Carriers: 6

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

Southwest on CLT to BWI lands a B, level with 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 966 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on CLT to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 948 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.66%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.5%

Every carrier on CLT to BWI, 2,996 flights

These figures cover 966 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 CLT to BWI

Southwest flew 966 of the 2,996 flights on CLT to BWI, about 32% of it. Its 78.3% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to Spirit at 69.6%. Four 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 CLT to BWI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
PSA Airlinesthin sample	57	80.7%	48 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	966	78.3%	60 min	1.66%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	139	76.5%	100 min	2.16%	B
American Airlines	1,809	75.4%	74 min	1.77%	B
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	24	69.6%	91 min	4.17%	C−

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 52 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–8am164 flights92.6%
8am–11am219 flights94.4%
11am–2pm141 flights78.4%
2pm–5pm115 flights71.9%
5pm–8pm214 flights72.7%
8pm–5am113 flights42.2%

Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.2% on time, against 94.4% 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 219 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on CLT to BWI through the year

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

July is the worst month at 65.1% on time, 25 points below January, the best at 90.0%. 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 92 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.7%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
49%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

49% 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 14 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 12,373 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 94.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.66% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.3% 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.

At 361 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 76.7% on time across 967 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 966 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on CLT to BWI

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 966 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 78.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 948 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