Carrier route record
WNBNA→ATL
Southwest Airlines · Nashville to Atlanta
- Flights
- 879
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BNA to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 879 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on BNA to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 877 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.5%
Every carrier on BNA to ATL, 4,239 flights
These figures cover 879 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
Southwest against every carrier on BNA to ATL
Southwest flew 879 of the 4,239 flights on BNA to ATL, about 21% of it. Its 74.6% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 3,360 | 87.1% | 72 min | 2.02% | A |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 879 | 74.6% | 50 min | 0.23% | 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 34 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–8am59 flights91.5%
- 8am–11am85 flights94.0%
- 11am–2pm228 flights82.0%
- 2pm–5pm187 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm244 flights59.8%
- 8pm–5am76 flights67.1%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 94.0% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 244 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BNA to ATL through the year
June is the worst month at 56.1% on time, 36 points below September, the best at 91.9%. 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 83 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.0%. 20 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 53% of the 11,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
53% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 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 10,891 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am 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 are rare at 0.23%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.9% 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 50 minutes, 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.1% on time across 881 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 879 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on BNA to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 879 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 74.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 877 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to ATL, every carrier
- Southwest on ATL to BNA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on BNA to ATL87.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.