Route reliability record
DFW→BWI
Dallas-Fort Worth to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,329
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,329 DFW to BWI flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DFW to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.5% of the time and Thursday flights 73.3%, against 69.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 83 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,284 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
69.0% on time across 938 flights
These figures cover 1,329 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 | 121 | 71.7% | 62 min | 0.83% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 267 | 69.1% | 81 min | 2.62% | C |
| American Airlines | 938 | 69.0% | 66 min | 3.30% | 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.
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. 5 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 | 83.6% | 84.4% | 0.98% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2639 07:25 |
| 2. DAL → BWIDallas to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 73.5% | 74.9% | 1.92% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → DCADallas-Fort Worth to Washington | American Airlines | 70.2% | 72.5% | 3.18% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1177 08:32 |
| 4. DFW → IADDallas-Fort Worth to Washington | American Airlines | 67.1% | 69.7% | 3.68% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. DAL → DCADallas to Washington | Southwest Airlines | 66.8% | 68.0% | 1.73% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 33 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–8am106 flights84.5%
- 8am–11am347 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm173 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm313 flights60.5%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights59.4%
- 8pm–5am31 flights51.6%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.6% on time, against 84.5% 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 359 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 54.5% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 79.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 143 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 73.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 27,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 27,046 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 84.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.93%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 72.0% on time across 1,335 flights, within 3 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 1,329 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.93% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,284 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 30.7% of the 1,329 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
69.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 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 84.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.6%, 33 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 DFW to BWI?
July is the weakest month at 54.5% on time, compared with 79.0% in February. Across the year that is 25 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
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to BWI71.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to BWI69.1%
- American Airlines on DFW to BWI69.0%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record71.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record69.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.