Carrier route record
WNTPA→BWI
Southwest Airlines · Tampa to Baltimore
- Flights
- 2,315
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 85%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TPA to BWI lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 2,315 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on TPA to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,264 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.5%
Every carrier on TPA to BWI, 2,717 flights
These figures cover 2,315 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
Southwest against every carrier on TPA to BWI
Southwest flew 2,315 of the 2,717 flights on TPA to BWI, most of the route. Its 80.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.4% to Spirit at 67.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 331 | 81.4% | 60 min | 2.11% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 2,315 | 80.8% | 56 min | 1.86% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 71 | 67.2% | 85 min | 5.63% | C− |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 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–8am514 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am492 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm347 flights85.6%
- 2pm–5pm367 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm441 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am154 flights56.0%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.0% on time, against 94.7% 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 514 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TPA to BWI through the year
July is the worst month at 67.5% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 89.5%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 228 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.7%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 24,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
48% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 24,282 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 94.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.86% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.7% 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 842 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 79.3% on time across 2,320 flights, within 2 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 2,315 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on TPA to BWI
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.5% on time and July 67.5%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,264 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to BWI, every carrier
- Southwest on BWI to TPA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to BWI81.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.