Carrier route record
WNTPA→BWI
Southwest Airlines · Tampa to Baltimore
- Flights
- 2,261
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 86%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TPA to BWI lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That rests on 2,261 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's TPA to BWI record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,209 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.9%
Every carrier on TPA to BWI, 2,626 flights
These figures cover 2,261 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on TPA to BWI
Southwest flew 2,261 of the 2,626 flights on TPA to BWI, most of the route. Its 81.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 88.5% to Southwest at 81.3%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 28 | 88.5% | 76 min | 7.14% | A− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 86.0% | 63 min | 2.08% | A |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 2,261 | 81.3% | 54 min | 1.64% | B |
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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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am474 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am544 flights89.4%
- 11am–2pm288 flights89.0%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm424 flights64.8%
- 8pm–5am173 flights57.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.9% on time, against 94.0% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 544 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TPA to BWI through the year
July is the worst month at 71.3% on time, 18 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 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.9%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on TPA to BWI runs when it is late
Southwest on TPA to BWI often beats the schedule: 562 of 2,209 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 414 late arrivals split 163 under half an hour, 132 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 119 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early562 flights25.4%
- Within 15 min1,233 flights55.8%
- 15–29 min late163 flights7.4%
- 30–59 min late132 flights6.0%
- 1–2 hours late83 flights3.8%
- 2+ hours late36 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,209 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
148 of 494 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 30% of them. 68 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on TPA to BWI
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 July 2026, 5 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across July, June, May and October, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 July 2026 | 5 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 June 2026 | 5 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 2 May 2026 | 4 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 October 2025 | 4 hours 46 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 July 2026 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 22,507 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 94.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.66%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.4% 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 55 minutes, 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.3% on time across 2,287 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,261 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 71.3%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,209 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 BWI86.0%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.