Route reliability record
ORF→BWI
Norfolk to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,539
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 159 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,539 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 95.3% of the time and Saturday flights 88.8%, against 84.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,512 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
84.8% on time across 1,539 flights
These figures cover 1,539 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 | 1,539 | 84.8% | 56 min | 1.69% | 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.
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 | 83.4% | 84.8% | 1.69% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. ORF → DCANorfolk to Washington | PSA Airlines | 62.1% | 64.7% | 3.96% | 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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.3%
- 8am–11am275 flights89.1%
- 11am–2pm305 flights86.8%
- 2pm–5pm258 flights75.1%
- 5pm–8pm276 flights75.8%
- 8pm–5am60 flights71.2%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.3% of the time, against 71.2% for the overnight window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORF to BWI by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ORF to BWI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 71.2%, a wide gap of 24.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.3%
- 8–11am89.1%
- 11am–2pm86.8%
- 2–5pm75.1%
- 5–8pm75.8%
- 8pm–5am71.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
December is the weak month at 73.0% on time, against 91.9% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. 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 78.0%, a spread of 11 points.
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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 12,941 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 95.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% 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.
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 78.5% on time across 1,539 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,539 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 December 73.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,512 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 seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.2% of the 1,539 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ORF to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
84.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 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 95.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 71.2%, 24 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 December delays on ORF to BWI?
December is the weakest month at 73.0% on time, compared with 91.9% in October. Across the year that is 19 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 route85.1%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- ORF to CLT, a related route81.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record84.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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.
Embed ORF to BWI’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.