Route reliability record
SRQ→BWI
Sarasota to Baltimore
- Flights
- 1,277
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 880 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,277 SRQ to BWI flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly SRQ to BWI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.9%, against 82.8% 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 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,252 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.8% on time across 1,277 flights
These figures cover 1,277 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SRQ 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 | 1,277 | 82.8% | 62 min | 1.64% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sarasota 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. TPA → IADTampa to Washington | United Airlines | 83.7% | 84.2% | 0.59% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 2331 09:00 |
| 2. SRQ → BWISarasota to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 81.4% | 82.8% | 1.64% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. TPA → BWITampa to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 79.3% | 80.8% | 1.86% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. TPA → DCATampa to Washington | Southwest Airlines | 74.8% | 75.9% | 1.43% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 5. TPA → DCATampa to Washington | American Airlines | 71.2% | 73.2% | 2.76% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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–8am363 flights97.2%
- 8am–11am68 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm326 flights89.1%
- 2pm–5pm150 flights66.4%
- 5pm–8pm370 flights68.1%
- 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 97.2% of the time, against 66.4% for the afternoon 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 67.2% on time, 25 points below January, the best at 91.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 137 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.2%. 13 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 60% of the 13,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
60% 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 14 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 13,216 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 97.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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.
The 880 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 80.0% on time across 1,277 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,277 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. January runs 91.8% on time and July 67.2%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,252 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SRQ to BWI questions
How often is SRQ 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 17.2% of the 1,277 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SRQ to BWI compared with the rest of the country?
82.8% 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 SRQ to BWI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 66.4%, 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 SRQ to BWI?
July is the weakest month at 67.2% on time, compared with 91.8% in January. Across the year that is 25 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 SRQ — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- SRQ to ATL, a related route88.9%
- ATL to BWI, a related route75.6%
- SRQ to CLT, a related route85.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.8%
- 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. SRQ to BWI and BWI to SRQ 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.