Carrier route record
WNFLL→BWI
Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore
- Flights
- 2,119
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 68%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on FLL to BWI sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,119 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on FLL to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,069 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on FLL to BWI, 3,101 flights
These figures cover 2,119 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 FLL to BWI
Southwest flew 2,119 of the 3,101 flights on FLL to BWI, most of the route. Its 74.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 74.2% to Spirit at 70.8%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 2,119 | 74.2% | 56 min | 2.08% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 136 | 71.1% | 93 min | 5.88% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 846 | 70.8% | 67 min | 4.02% | 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 39 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–8am427 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am452 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm363 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm316 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm420 flights53.6%
- 8pm–5am141 flights57.9%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 93.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 452 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on FLL to BWI through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 87.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 198 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.1%. 20 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 30,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 29,823 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 93.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.08% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% 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 925 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 75.9% on time across 2,126 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 2,119 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 FLL to BWI
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.6% on time and March 63.2%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,069 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to BWI, every carrier
- Southwest on BWI to FLL, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to BWI71.1%
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to BWI70.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.