Route reliability record
ORF→BWI
Norfolk to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,538
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 159 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,538 ORF to BWI flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORF to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Saturday flights 88.8%, against 83.8% 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 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,514 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.8% on time across 1,538 flights
These figures cover 1,538 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 ORF 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 | 1,538 | 83.8% | 61 min | 1.56% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Norfolk 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. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORF → BWINorfolk to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 82.5% | 83.8% | 1.56% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. ORF → DCANorfolk to Washington | PSA Airlines | 65.2% | 67.5% | 3.36% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am259 flights90.7%
- 11am–2pm272 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm253 flights74.3%
- 5pm–8pm307 flights73.1%
- 8pm–5am82 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 95.9% 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 365 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 68.3% on time, 24 points below October, the best at 91.9%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.5%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 15,000 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
44% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 14,946 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 95.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 159 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.6% on time across 1,538 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,538 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. October runs 91.9% on time and July 68.3%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,514 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORF to BWI questions
How often is ORF 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 16.2% of the 1,538 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ORF to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
83.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORF to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.6%, 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 ORF to BWI?
July is the weakest month at 68.3% on time, compared with 91.9% in October. 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 ORF — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- ORF to ATL, a related route85.6%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- ORF to CLT, a related route82.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.8%
- 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. ORF to BWI and BWI to ORF 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.