Route reliability record

BNA→CLT

Nashville to Charlotte

Flights: 3,525
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 328 mi
Carriers: 6

This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,525 flights, of which American Airlines flew 2,233 at 79.5% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.5% on time across 2,233 flights.

On time

78.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,462 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.76%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

American

79.5% on time across 2,233 flights

These figures cover 3,525 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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

Which airline is most reliable on BNA to CLT

The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	26	96.2%	146 min	0.00%	A+
Envoy Airthin sample	11	81.8%	45 min	0.00%	B+
American Airlines	2,233	79.5%	97 min	1.66%	B
PSA Airlines	531	77.8%	62 min	2.64%	B
Southwest Airlines	718	76.3%	50 min	1.53%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	6	50.0%	101 min	0.00%	F+

No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 79.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 28 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am666 flights87.1%
8am–11am922 flights88.2%
11am–2pm417 flights80.9%
2pm–5pm721 flights69.6%
5pm–8pm671 flights69.1%
8pm–5am128 flights60.2%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.2% on time, against 88.2% 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 922 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 15 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, July worst

July is the worst month at 68.7% on time, 15 points below January, the best at 83.4%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 336 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.6%. 16 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 48% of the 60,000 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
48%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

48% 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 60,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 59,565 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 23,000 of the 60,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.03%.

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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 328 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 runs 76.1% on time across 3,525 flights, within 3 points 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 3,525 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 this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 83.4% on time and July 68.7%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,462 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

BNA to CLT questions

How often is BNA to CLT delayed?

About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.3% of the 3,525 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on BNA to CLT?

American Airlines leads at 79.5% on time across 2,233 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.3%, a gap of 3 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 CLT?

The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.2%, 28 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 July delays on BNA to CLT?

July is the weakest month at 68.7% on time, compared with 83.4% in January. Across the year that is 15 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. BNA to CLT and CLT to BNA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures