Route reliability record
HOU→BWI
Houston to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,482
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,246 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,482 HOU to BWI flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly HOU to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.1%, against 74.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,457 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.9% on time across 1,482 flights
These figures cover 1,482 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HOU 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 | 1,482 | 74.9% | 47 min | 1.35% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston 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. IAH → IADHouston to Washington | United Airlines | 82.0% | 82.4% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Mon | UA 1549 07:20 |
| 2. IAH → BWIHouston to Baltimore | United Airlines | 80.8% | 81.3% | 0.60% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. IAH → DCAHouston to Washington | United Airlines | 76.2% | 76.7% | 0.67% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 654 12:00 |
| 4. HOU → BWIHouston to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 73.9% | 74.9% | 1.35% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. IAH → DCAHouston to Washington | Republic Airways | 72.2% | 75.9% | 4.87% | 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 42 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am387 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am203 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm175 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm243 flights63.5%
- 5pm–8pm297 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am177 flights51.1%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.1% on time, against 93.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 387 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HOU 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 HOU to BWI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 51.1%, a wide gap of 42.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.2%
- 8–11am88.1%
- 11am–2pm83.3%
- 2–5pm63.5%
- 5–8pm60.5%
- 8pm–5am51.1%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 56.7%. January is the strongest month at 91.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 35 points. July was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.8%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 17,082 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,246 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 runs 75.7% on time across 1,471 flights, within about a point 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 1,482 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. January runs 91.8% on time and March 56.7%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,457 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to BWI questions
How often is HOU to BWI delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.1% of the 1,482 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
74.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.1%, 42 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 HOU to BWI?
March is the weakest month at 56.7% on time, compared with 91.8% in January. Across the year that is 35 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 HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.9%
- 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. HOU to BWI and BWI to HOU 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.