Route reliability record
ROC→BWI
Rochester to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,104
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 277 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 5 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,104 ROC to BWI flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly ROC to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.1% of the time and Friday flights 84.4%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,087 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.4% on time across 1,104 flights
These figures cover 1,104 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 ROC 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 | 1,104 | 82.4% | 68 min | 1.27% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Rochester 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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BUF → BWIBuffalo to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 85.1% | 86.5% | 1.61% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. ROC → BWIRochester to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 81.4% | 82.4% | 1.27% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 3. ROC → DCARochester to Washington | PSA Airlines | 61.1% | 65.0% | 5.94% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. BUF → DCABuffalo to Washington | PSA Airlines | 59.2% | 63.1% | 6.18% | 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 23 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–8am366 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am15 flights—
- 11am–2pm358 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm209 flights79.4%
- 5pm–8pm156 flights70.0%
- 8pm–5am—
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 93.1% of the time, against 70.0% for the evening window. That is 23 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 366 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 68.8% on time, against 94.4% in April. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.1%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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.
- 41%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
39% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 12,981 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 5,364 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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 277 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 75.2% on time across 1,104 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,104 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. April runs 94.4% on time and December 68.8%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,087 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ROC to BWI questions
How often is ROC 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 17.6% of the 1,104 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ROC to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
82.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ROC to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.0%, 23 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 ROC to BWI?
December is the weakest month at 68.8% on time, compared with 94.4% in April. Across the year that is 26 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 ROC — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- ROC to ORD, a related route74.7%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- ROC to ATL, a related route81.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.4%
- 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. ROC to BWI and BWI to ROC 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.