Route reliability record
PIT→BWI
Pittsburgh to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,071
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 210 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. 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 1,071 PIT to BWI flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly PIT to BWI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.9%, against 85.7% 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 84 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,050 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
85.7% on time across 1,071 flights
These figures cover 1,071 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
Which airline is most reliable on PIT 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 | 1,071 | 85.7% | 57 min | 1.40% | A |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Pittsburgh 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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PIT → IADPittsburgh to Washington | Republic Airways | 87.7% | 89.4% | 1.88% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 3679 06:10 |
| 2. PIT → IADPittsburgh to Washington | United Airlines | 85.3% | 86.0% | 0.77% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. PIT → BWIPittsburgh to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 84.5% | 85.7% | 1.40% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. PIT → DCAPittsburgh to Washington | Republic Airways | 72.3% | 73.9% | 2.14% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 5. PIT → DCAPittsburgh to Washington | PSA Airlines | 60.0% | 64.7% | 7.28% | 8am–11am, 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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.1%
- 8am–11am209 flights97.1%
- 11am–2pm133 flights85.6%
- 2pm–5pm170 flights78.5%
- 5pm–8pm194 flights60.9%
- 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: 60.9% on time, against 97.1% for the 8am–11am 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.
Explore
Filter PIT 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 PIT to BWI, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 97.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.9%, a wide gap of 36.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am95.1%
- 8–11am97.1%
- 11am–2pm85.6%
- 2–5pm78.5%
- 5–8pm60.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 78.9% on time, against 93.0% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.9%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 8,616 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,616 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 8,616 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 97.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.40% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.56%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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 210 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.9% on time across 1,071 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,071 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BWI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,071 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 85.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,050 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIT to BWI questions
How often is PIT 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 14.3% of the 1,071 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PIT to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
85.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to BWI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 97.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.9%, 36 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 PIT to BWI?
December is the weakest month at 78.9% on time, compared with 93.0% in September. Across the year that is 14 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 PIT — the return legseparate record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- PIT to ORD, a related route77.1%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- PIT to LGA, a related route79.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.7%
- 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. PIT to BWI and BWI to PIT 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.