Route reliability record
BNA→CHS
Nashville to Charleston
- Flights
- 991
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 439 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 991 BNA to CHS flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly BNA to CHS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.7%, against 71.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 982 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.50%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
71.3% on time across 991 flights
These figures cover 991 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to CHS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 991 | 71.3% | 49 min | 0.50% | C+ |
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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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am363 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm66 flights57.8%
- 2pm–5pm258 flights64.6%
- 5pm–8pm239 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am65 flights71.4%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.0% on time, against 87.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to CHS 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 CHS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 87.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 57.0%, a wide gap of 30.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am87.8%
- 11am–2pm57.8%
- 2–5pm64.6%
- 5–8pm57.0%
- 8pm–5am71.4%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 43 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.
June is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 43 points below September, the best at 93.2%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.8%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 to one. The split is drawn from 13,870 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 87.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.50%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
7.2% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 439 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 77.0% on time across 989 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 991 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CHS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 991 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 71.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 982 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to CHS questions
How often is BNA to CHS delayed?
Roughly 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 28.7% of the 991 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to CHS compared with the rest of the country?
71.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to CHS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.0%, 31 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 June delays on BNA to CHS?
June is the weakest month at 50.0% on time, compared with 93.2% in September. Across the year that is 43 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
- CHS to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Charleston International (CHS) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ATL to CHS, a related route82.3%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BNA to CHS and CHS 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.