Route reliability record
MSP→BWI
Minneapolis to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,406
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 936 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,406 MSP to BWI flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 918 at 81.3% on time.
Best time to fly MSP to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.6%, against 80.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,384 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
81.3% on time across 918 flights
These figures cover 1,406 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 MSP to BWI
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 918 | 81.3% | 63 min | 1.09% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 488 | 79.7% | 61 min | 1.64% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.3%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to BWI
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Minneapolis 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. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MSP → BWIMinneapolis to Baltimore | Delta Air Lines | 80.4% | 81.3% | 1.09% | 8am–11am, Tue | DL 2918 20:20 |
| 2. MSP → IADMinneapolis to Washington | SkyWest Airlines | 79.5% | 80.3% | 0.98% | 11am–2pm, Sat (route) | OO 3783 10:00 |
| 3. MSP → BWIMinneapolis to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 78.4% | 79.7% | 1.64% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. MSP → DCAMinneapolis to Washington | Delta Air Lines | 74.0% | 75.6% | 2.12% | 8am–11am, Tue | DL 2983 10:36 |
| 5. MSP → DCAMinneapolis to Washington | PSA Airlines | 68.6% | 72.7% | 5.59% | 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 32 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am450 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am177 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm47 flights72.3%
- 2pm–5pm291 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm114 flights59.5%
- 8pm–5am327 flights78.6%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.5% on time, against 91.0% 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 450 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 65.0% on time, 24 points below November, the best at 88.9%. 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 143 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.1%. 16 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 43% of the 17,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 7,103 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,545 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 91.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.4% 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 936 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 80.3% on time across 1,406 flights, within half 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 1,406 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. November runs 88.9% on time and July 65.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,384 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to BWI questions
How often is MSP to BWI delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.2% of the 1,406 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to BWI?
Delta Air Lines leads at 81.3% on time across 918 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.7%, a gap of 2 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 MSP to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.5%, 32 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 MSP to BWI?
July is the weakest month at 65.0% on time, compared with 88.9% in November. Across the year that is 24 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 MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to BWI81.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MSP to BWI79.7%
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record81.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.7%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSP to BWI and BWI to MSP 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.