Route reliability record
BNA→CLE
Nashville to Cleveland
- Flights
- 1,042
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 448 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,042 BNA to CLE flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly BNA to CLE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.7%, against 74.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,033 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.3% on time across 947 flights
These figures cover 1,042 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to CLE
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 55 | 83.3% | 82 min | 1.82% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 79.5% | 77 min | 2.50% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 947 | 73.3% | 52 min | 0.63% | C+ |
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 51 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–8am5 flights—
- 8am–11am298 flights93.3%
- 11am–2pm113 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm260 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm249 flights66.4%
- 8pm–5am117 flights42.6%
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.6% on time, against 93.3% 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 298 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 88.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. November was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.6%. 24 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 14,000 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
69% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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 14,423 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 93.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.77%, 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 actually costs
7.7% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 448 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 85.0% on time across 1,041 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,042 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 CLE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,042 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 74.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,033 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to CLE questions
How often is BNA to CLE delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.9% of the 1,042 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
74.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 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 CLE?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 42.6%, 51 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 May delays on BNA to CLE?
May is the weakest month at 57.5% on time, compared with 88.5% in September. Across the year that is 31 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
- CLE to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.4%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- BNA to DCA, a related route73.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record83.3%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BNA to CLE and CLE 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.