Route reliability record
RIC→BWI
Richmond to Baltimore
- Flights
- 730
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 120 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 730 RIC to BWI flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly RIC to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.3%, against 74.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 712 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.9% on time across 730 flights
These figures cover 730 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 RIC 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 | 730 | 74.9% | 60 min | 1.78% | C |
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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 40 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am351 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am14 flights—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm133 flights75.8%
- 5pm–8pm231 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 89.9% 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 351 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RIC 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 RIC to BWI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 50.0%, a wide gap of 39.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.9%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm75.8%
- 5–8pm50.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 58.1% on time, against 86.0% in January. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.3%, a spread of 17 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 10,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,484 reported delay minutes.
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.78% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.68%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
At 120 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 runs 77.5% on time across 730 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 730 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. 730 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 74.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 712 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to BWI questions
How often is RIC to BWI delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.1% of the 730 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is RIC to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
74.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RIC to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 50.0%, 40 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 RIC to BWI?
December is the weakest month at 58.1% on time, compared with 86.0% in January. Across the year that is 28 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- RIC to ATL, a related route88.5%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.2%
- RIC to CLT, a related route82.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record74.9%
- 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. RIC to BWI and BWI to RIC 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.