Carrier route record
WNMSP→BWI
Southwest Airlines · Minneapolis to Baltimore
- Flights
- 496
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MSP to BWI lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 496 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's MSP to BWI record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 481 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.1%
Every carrier on MSP to BWI, 1,419 flights
These figures cover 496 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MSP to BWI
Southwest flew 496 of the 1,419 flights on MSP to BWI, about 35% of it. Its 82.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.3% to Delta at 82.0%.
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 (this page) | 496 | 82.3% | 52 min | 1.81% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 923 | 82.0% | 61 min | 1.52% | B |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 38 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am253 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am27 flights—
- 11am–2pm57 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm80 flights68.8%
- 5pm–8pm79 flights56.2%
- 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: 56.2% on time, against 94.0% 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 253 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MSP to BWI through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 66.7%. August is the strongest month at 90.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. July was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.0%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MSP to BWI runs when it is late
The 85 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 21 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early114 flights23.7%
- Within 15 min282 flights58.6%
- 15–29 min late32 flights6.7%
- 30–59 min late32 flights6.7%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 481 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 109 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 34 still arrived on time. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MSP to BWI
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 July 2026, 4 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 July 2026 | 4 hours 8 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 23 June 2026 | 3 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours 19 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 September 2025 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 4,425 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,425 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 4,425 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 94.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.4% on time across 500 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 496 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on MSP to BWI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 496 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 82.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 481 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to BWI, every carrier
- Southwest on BWI to MSP, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to BWI82.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.