Route reliability record
IND→BWI
Indianapolis to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,216
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 516 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,216 IND to BWI flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly IND to BWI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.4% of the time and Thursday flights 89.9%, against 85.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,194 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
85.1% on time across 1,216 flights
These figures cover 1,216 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IND 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 | 1,216 | 85.1% | 58 min | 1.64% | A |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Indianapolis 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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IND → IADIndianapolis to Washington | Republic Airways | 83.9% | 85.3% | 1.69% | 8am–11am, Thu (route) | YX 3709 10:05 |
| 2. IND → BWIIndianapolis to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 83.7% | 85.1% | 1.64% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 3. IND → DCAIndianapolis to Washington | Republic Airways | 72.7% | 75.2% | 3.39% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 4802 10:00 |
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am302 flights95.3%
- 8am–11am243 flights95.4%
- 11am–2pm168 flights92.8%
- 2pm–5pm235 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm258 flights73.4%
- 8pm–5am10 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 95.4% of the time, against 70.7% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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 302 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 75.2% on time, 19 points below January, the best at 94.4%. 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 119 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.2%. 11 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 45% of the 10,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 10,237 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 516 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.0% on time across 1,219 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,216 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 94.4% on time and July 75.2%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,194 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to BWI questions
How often is IND to BWI delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.9% of the 1,216 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is IND to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
85.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IND to BWI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 95.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.7%, 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 July delays on IND to BWI?
July is the weakest month at 75.2% on time, compared with 94.4% in January. Across the year that is 19 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 IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- IND to ORD, a related route76.5%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- IND to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. IND to BWI and BWI to IND 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.