Route reliability record
MCI→BWI
Kansas City to Baltimore
- Flights
- 887
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 966 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 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 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 887 MCI to BWI flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCI to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.7%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 867 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.03%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.4% on time across 887 flights
These figures cover 887 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 MCI 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 | 887 | 82.4% | 51 min | 2.03% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kansas City 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. MCI → BWIKansas City to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 80.7% | 82.4% | 2.03% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MCI → DCAKansas City to Washington | Southwest Airlines | 72.2% | 73.1% | 1.20% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. MCI → DCAKansas City to Washington | PSA Airlines | 67.7% | 72.8% | 7.04% | 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 37 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–8am364 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am80 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm75 flights85.1%
- 2pm–5pm174 flights83.3%
- 5pm–8pm194 flights56.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 93.6% 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 364 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 71.7%. February is the strongest month at 94.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 22 points. July was the busiest month here, with 96 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.0%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,852 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% 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 7,852 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 7,852 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 2,870 of the 7,852 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 966 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 76.0% on time across 884 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 887 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BWI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 887 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 867 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to BWI questions
How often is MCI 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 17.6% of the 887 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is MCI to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
82.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCI to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.1%, 37 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 MCI to BWI?
March is the weakest month at 71.7% on time, compared with 94.0% in February. 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 MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- MCI to DEN, a related route76.1%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.4%
- 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. MCI to BWI and BWI to MCI 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.