Route reliability record
RDU→BWI
Raleigh to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,800
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 256 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,800 RDU to BWI flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly RDU to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.0% of the time and Saturday flights 92.2%, against 85.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,756 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.33%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
85.8% on time across 1,788 flights
These figures cover 1,800 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RDU 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 | 1,788 | 85.8% | 64 min | 2.35% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 255 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Raleigh 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. RDU → IADRaleigh to Washington | United Airlines | 86.3% | 87.5% | 1.39% | 8am–11am, Sat | UA 2463 15:02 |
| 2. RDU → BWIRaleigh to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 83.8% | 85.8% | 2.35% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
| 3. RDU → DCARaleigh to Washington | Envoy Air | 64.0% | 67.2% | 4.69% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 4. RDU → DCARaleigh to Washington | PSA Airlines | 57.1% | 60.5% | 5.61% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. RDU → DCARaleigh to Washington | Republic Airways | 56.2% | 59.4% | 5.43% | 5am–8am, 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 31 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–8am344 flights97.0%
- 8am–11am299 flights91.4%
- 11am–2pm364 flights89.8%
- 2pm–5pm332 flights85.3%
- 5pm–8pm298 flights72.9%
- 8pm–5am163 flights66.0%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.0% of the time, against 66.0% for the overnight window. That is 31 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 74.5% on time, 18 points below November, the best at 92.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 169 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.4%. 17 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 53% of the 16,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
53% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 16,484 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 97.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% 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 256 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 80.9% on time across 1,801 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 1,800 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. November runs 92.9% on time and July 74.5%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,756 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDU to BWI questions
How often is RDU 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 14.2% of the 1,800 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is RDU to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
85.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 RDU to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.0%, 31 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 RDU to BWI?
July is the weakest month at 74.5% on time, compared with 92.9% in November. Across the year that is 18 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 RDU — the return legseparate record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- RDU to ATL, a related route87.6%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- RDU to ORD, a related route74.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record75.0%
- 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. RDU to BWI and BWI to RDU 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.