Carrier route record

DLATL→BNA

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Nashville

Flights: 3,361
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 79%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on ATL to BNA lands a B, 4 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 3,361 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ATL to BNA record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,289 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.90%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.4%

Every carrier on ATL to BNA, 4,242 flights

These figures cover 3,361 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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

Delta against every carrier on ATL to BNA

Delta flew 3,361 of the 4,242 flights on ATL to BNA, most of the route. Its 82.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.0% to Southwest at 79.1%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to BNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	3,361	82.0%	56 min	1.90%	B
Southwest Airlines	881	79.1%	65 min	0.45%	B+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on ATL to BNA

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 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–8am127 flights94.9%
8am–11am714 flights90.4%
11am–2pm581 flights85.5%
2pm–5pm482 flights79.1%
5pm–8pm657 flights73.9%
8pm–5am800 flights78.3%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.9% of the time, against 73.9% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 800 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on ATL to BNA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, July worst

July is the worst month at 74.8% on time, 15 points below June, the best at 89.6%. 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 321 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 33,000 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.

Carrier
44%
National Airspace System
24%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
Extreme weather
9%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 14,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 32,940 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.4% 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.

At 214 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 87.1% on time across 3,360 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,361 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 Delta on ATL to BNA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. June runs 89.6% on time and July 74.8%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,289 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures