Carrier route record
WNMSY→BWI
Southwest Airlines · New Orleans to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,030
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 87%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MSY to BWI lands a B, 4 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 1,030 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MSY to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,011 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.9%
Every carrier on MSY to BWI, 1,180 flights
These figures cover 1,030 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MSY to BWI
Southwest flew 1,030 of the 1,180 flights on MSY to BWI, most of the route. Its 81.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 81.1% to Frontier at 77.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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) | 1,030 | 81.1% | 56 min | 1.55% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 132 | 80.2% | 53 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 77.8% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 36 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–8am362 flights95.5%
- 8am–11am166 flights92.1%
- 11am–2pm125 flights72.1%
- 2pm–5pm196 flights69.8%
- 5pm–8pm159 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am22 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 95.5% 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 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MSY to BWI through the year
July is the worst month at 73.0% on time, 18 points below August, the best at 90.9%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.2%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 11,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
56% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 10,616 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 95.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.7% 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 998 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 76.7% on time across 1,031 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,030 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 MSY to BWI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,030 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 81.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,011 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to BWI, every carrier
- Southwest on BWI to MSY, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on MSY to BWI80.2%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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 7.04 million flight records
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.