Route reliability record
DFW→BWI
Dallas-Fort Worth to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,325
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,217 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,325 DFW to BWI flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DFW to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.6% of the time and Thursday flights 74.5%, against 69.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 74 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,281 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
68.2% on time across 968 flights
These figures cover 1,325 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DFW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 77.9% | 56 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 286 | 73.0% | 72 min | 2.10% | C |
| American Airlines | 968 | 68.2% | 65 min | 2.79% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DFW to BWI
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth 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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → IADDallas-Fort Worth to Washington | United Airlines | 82.9% | 83.6% | 0.86% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2639 07:25 |
| 2. DAL → BWIDallas to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 72.4% | 73.8% | 1.86% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → DCADallas-Fort Worth to Washington | American Airlines | 71.6% | 73.6% | 2.76% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1177 09:23 |
| 4. DFW → IADDallas-Fort Worth to Washington | American Airlines | 69.0% | 70.7% | 2.47% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. DFW → BWIDallas-Fort Worth to Baltimore | American Airlines | 66.3% | 68.2% | 2.79% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 2251 19:37 |
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am135 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am313 flights81.3%
- 11am–2pm243 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm276 flights61.2%
- 5pm–8pm348 flights59.8%
- 8pm–5am10 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 84.6% 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 348 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW 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 DFW to BWI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.8%, a wide gap of 24.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.6%
- 8–11am81.3%
- 11am–2pm71.7%
- 2–5pm61.2%
- 5–8pm59.8%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 57.9%. February is the strongest month at 79.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. July was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 74.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.5%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 25,315 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 84.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.49% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.83%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,217 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 73.1% on time across 1,326 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,325 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 BWI 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. February runs 79.0% on time and March 57.9%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,281 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to BWI questions
How often is DFW to BWI delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.1% of the 1,325 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
69.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.8%, 25 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 March delays on DFW to BWI?
March is the weakest month at 57.9% on time, compared with 79.0% in February. Across the year that is 21 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to BWI73.0%
- American Airlines on DFW to BWI68.2%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record77.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.0%
- 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. DFW to BWI and BWI to DFW 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.