Carrier route record
WNBNA→CLT
Southwest Airlines · Nashville to Charlotte
- Flights
- 718
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BNA to CLT lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 718 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,233 at 79.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on BNA to CLT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 706 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.7%
Every carrier on BNA to CLT, 3,525 flights
These figures cover 718 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 CLT
Southwest flew 718 of the 3,525 flights on BNA to CLT, about 20% of it. Its 76.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 96.2% to SkyWest at 50.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.
| 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 (this page) | 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%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 31 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am317 flights90.7%
- 11am–2pm17 flights—
- 2pm–5pm130 flights65.9%
- 5pm–8pm126 flights67.7%
- 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 90.7% 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 317 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BNA to CLT through the year
June is the worst month at 60.0% on time, 35 points below January, the best at 94.9%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 80 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.7%. 15 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 60% of the 8,339 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
- 1%Extreme weather
60% 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 8,339 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 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 8,339 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 90.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
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 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 75.2% on time across 717 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 718 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 CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 718 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 76.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 706 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to CLT, every carrier
- Southwest on CLT to BNA, the return leg
- American Airlines on BNA to CLT79.5%
- PSA Airlines on BNA to CLT77.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.