Route reliability record
BNA→DCA
Nashville to Washington
- Flights
- 4,330
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 562 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 4,330 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,861 at 75.1% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.1% on time across 1,861 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,172 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
75.1% on time across 1,861 flights
These figures cover 4,330 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to DCA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 75.1% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 65.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 387 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 313 | 78.4% | 65 min | 5.43% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,861 | 75.1% | 62 min | 2.90% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 116 | 73.6% | 60 min | 5.17% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,653 | 72.2% | 52 min | 1.45% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 387 | 65.1% | 117 min | 10.08% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 10.1% 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.
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 24 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am887 flights82.2%
- 8am–11am704 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm758 flights74.0%
- 2pm–5pm681 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm876 flights61.9%
- 8pm–5am424 flights65.7%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.9% on time, against 86.1% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 887 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 March, when the on-time rate falls to 61.1%. August is the strongest month at 83.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 22 points. October was the busiest month here, with 388 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.2%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 71,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 71,000 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 71,292 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 24,000 minutes out of 71,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.23%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
8.8% 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 about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 562 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.1% on time across 4,329 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,330 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.23% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 4,172 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to DCA questions
How often is BNA to DCA delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.7% of the 4,330 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to DCA?
Republic Airways leads at 75.1% on time across 1,861 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 65.1%, a gap of 10 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 DCA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.9%, 24 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 March delays on BNA to DCA?
March is the weakest month at 61.1% on time, compared with 83.4% in August. Across the year that is 22 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
- DCA to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record78.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.6%
- 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 DCA and DCA 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.