Route reliability record
LAX→BWI
Los Angeles to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,722
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,329 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,722 LAX to BWI flights, of which United Airlines flew 575 at 90.7% on time.
Best time to fly LAX to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.4% of the time and Monday flights 86.9%, against 83.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,706 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
90.7% on time across 575 flights
These figures cover 1,722 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 LAX to BWI
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 90.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,038 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 575 | 90.7% | 65 min | 0.35% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,038 | 79.8% | 40 min | 0.77% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 75.0% | 70 min | 0.92% | B+ |
United leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Los Angeles 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 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → BWILos Angeles to Baltimore | United Airlines | 90.4% | 90.7% | 0.35% | 11am–2pm, Mon | — |
| 2. LAX → IADLos Angeles to Washington | United Airlines | 86.6% | 87.2% | 0.73% | 5am–8am, Tue (route) | UA 2667 10:50 |
| 3. LAX → DCALos Angeles to Washington | American Airlines | 81.1% | 82.0% | 1.10% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 4. LAX → BWILos Angeles to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 79.2% | 79.8% | 0.77% | 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 24 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am346 flights92.4%
- 8am–11am384 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm250 flights68.0%
- 2pm–5pm26 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am716 flights85.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 68.0% on time against 92.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 716 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 72.1%. January is the strongest month at 94.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 22 points. July was the busiest month here, with 176 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.5%. 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. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 14,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 5,996 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,582 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 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% 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.
At 2,329 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.4% on time across 1,727 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,722 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 94.1% on time and March 72.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,706 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to BWI questions
How often is LAX to BWI delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.8% of the 1,722 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LAX to BWI?
United Airlines leads at 90.7% on time across 575 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.8%, a gap of 11 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 68.0%, 24 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 LAX to BWI?
March is the weakest month at 72.1% on time, compared with 94.1% in January. Across the year that is 22 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 LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- United Airlines on LAX to BWI90.7%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to BWI79.8%
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to BWI75.0%
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- United Airlines on-time record90.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. LAX to BWI and BWI to LAX 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.