Carrier route record

DLBNA→ATL

Delta Air Lines · Nashville to Atlanta

Flights: 3,360
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 BNA to ATL earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 3,360 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BNA to ATL record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.1%

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

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.5%

Every carrier on BNA to ATL, 4,239 flights

These figures cover 3,360 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 BNA to ATL

Delta flew 3,360 of the 4,239 flights on BNA to ATL, most of the route. Its 87.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.1% to Southwest at 74.6%.

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 BNA to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	3,360	87.1%	72 min	2.02%	A
Southwest Airlines	879	74.6%	50 min	0.23%	C+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on BNA to ATL

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 11 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–8am984 flights91.0%
8am–11am695 flights91.2%
11am–2pm519 flights87.9%
2pm–5pm555 flights82.3%
5pm–8pm595 flights80.0%
8pm–5am12 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.2% of the time, against 80.0% for the evening window. That is 11 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 984 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on BNA to ATL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, November worst

September is the best month on the calendar at 93.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 322 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.8%. 9 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 30,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
5%

42% 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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 30,387 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.0% on time across 3,361 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,360 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 BNA to ATL

Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 80.0% on time against 91.2% for the 8am–11am slot, and that 11 points is the largest single thing you control here. Southwest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 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