Route reliability record
BNA→BOS
Nashville to Boston
- Flights
- 2,940
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 942 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,940 BNA to BOS flights, of which Republic Airways flew 474 at 80.0% on time.
Best time to fly BNA to BOS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Saturday flights 79.6%, against 67.6% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 80.0% on time across 474 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,858 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
80.0% on time across 474 flights
These figures cover 2,940 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to BOS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 59.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,002 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airways | 474 | 80.0% | 90 min | 3.16% | B− |
| JetBlue Airways | 887 | 69.8% | 76 min | 4.06% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 559 | 69.3% | 103 min | 1.61% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,002 | 59.1% | 56 min | 1.30% | D |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 16 | 57.1% | 74 min | 12.50% | D− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Nashville to Boston
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BNA → BOSNashville to Boston | Republic Airways | 77.5% | 80.0% | 3.16% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. BNA → BOSNashville to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 68.2% | 69.3% | 1.61% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. BNA → BOSNashville to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 67.0% | 69.8% | 4.06% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. BNA → BOSNashville to Boston | Southwest Airlines | 58.3% | 59.1% | 1.30% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 37 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am481 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am599 flights78.5%
- 11am–2pm665 flights62.7%
- 2pm–5pm270 flights52.3%
- 5pm–8pm697 flights59.2%
- 8pm–5am228 flights52.0%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.0% on time, against 88.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 697 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to BOS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BNA to BOS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 52.0%, a wide gap of 36.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.5%
- 8–11am78.5%
- 11am–2pm62.7%
- 2–5pm52.3%
- 5–8pm59.2%
- 8pm–5am52.0%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 55.5%. January is the strongest month at 78.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. October was the busiest month here, with 330 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.3%, a spread of 20 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 68,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 68,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 to one. The split is drawn from 68,212 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 88.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.55%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 942 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 runs 68.8% on time across 2,939 flights, within about a point 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 2,940 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BOS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 78.3% on time and September 55.5%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of September before you think about anything else. 2,858 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to BOS questions
How often is BNA to BOS delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.4% of the 2,940 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to BOS?
Republic Airways leads at 80.0% on time across 474 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 59.1%, a gap of 21 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.0%, 37 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are September delays on BNA to BOS?
September is the weakest month at 55.5% on time, compared with 78.3% in January. Across the year that is 23 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- BOS to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on BNA to BOS80.0%
- JetBlue Airways on BNA to BOS69.8%
- Delta Air Lines on BNA to BOS69.3%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to BOS59.1%
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- DCA to BOS, a related route70.1%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.0%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record69.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BNA to BOS and BOS to BNA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.