Route reliability record
CVG→BWI
Cincinnati to Baltimore
- Flights
- 720
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 430 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 720 CVG to BWI flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CVG to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Saturday flights 89.5%, against 84.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 706 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
84.4% on time across 720 flights
These figures cover 720 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CVG to BWI
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 | 720 | 84.4% | 66 min | 1.11% | B |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cincinnati to Baltimore
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. CVG → BWICincinnati to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 83.5% | 84.4% | 1.11% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. CVG → DCACincinnati to Washington | PSA Airlines | 58.1% | 62.0% | 6.21% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | OH 5445 06:07 |
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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am361 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm9 flights—
- 2pm–5pm284 flights75.8%
- 5pm–8pm66 flights78.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 75.8% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CVG to BWI 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 CVG to BWI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.5% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 75.8%, a wide gap of 16.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.5%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm75.8%
- 5–8pm78.8%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 70.7% on time, 26 points below April, the best at 96.7%. 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 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.4%, a spread of 11 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 7,292 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 6%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. Across 7,292 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 7,292 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 92.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.83%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% 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.
At 430 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.9% on time across 721 flights, 4 points below 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 720 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 BWI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 720 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 84.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 706 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CVG to BWI questions
How often is CVG to BWI delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.6% of the 720 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CVG to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
84.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CVG to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.8%, 17 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 CVG to BWI?
July is the weakest month at 70.7% on time, compared with 96.7% in April. Across the year that is 26 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
- BWI to CVG — the return legseparate record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- CVG to ORD, a related route70.8%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- CVG to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record84.4%
- 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. CVG to BWI and BWI to CVG 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.