Route reliability record
BNA→DEN
Nashville to Denver
- Flights
- 3,632
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,013 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, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,632 BNA to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,181 at 79.4% on time.
Best time to fly BNA to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.8%, against 74.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,598 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
79.4% on time across 1,181 flights
These figures cover 3,632 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,132 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 319 | 80.6% | 77 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,181 | 79.4% | 86 min | 0.85% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,132 | 70.4% | 54 min | 0.42% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on BNA to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Nashville to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BNA → DENNashville to Denver | United Airlines | 78.7% | 79.4% | 0.85% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1716 07:00 |
| 2. BNA → DENNashville to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 70.1% | 70.4% | 0.42% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 39 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am688 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am675 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm418 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm812 flights67.7%
- 5pm–8pm731 flights53.8%
- 8pm–5am308 flights71.0%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.8% on time, against 92.8% for the 5am–8am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 812 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to DEN 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 DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 53.8%, a wide gap of 39.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.8%
- 8–11am86.5%
- 11am–2pm74.2%
- 2–5pm67.7%
- 5–8pm53.8%
- 8pm–5am71.0%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 58.9% on time, 27 points below November, the best at 85.8%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 352 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.3%, a spread of 9 points.
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 59,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 59,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 59,420 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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
8.8% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,013 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.
The return leg runs 74.9% on time across 3,617 flights, within half a point 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 3,632 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 85.8% on time and June 58.9%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,598 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to DEN questions
How often is BNA to DEN 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 25.8% of the 3,632 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 79.4% on time across 1,181 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 70.4%, a gap of 9 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 DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.8%, 39 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 DEN?
June is the weakest month at 58.9% on time, compared with 85.8% in November. Across the year that is 27 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
- DEN to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on BNA to DEN80.6%
- United Airlines on BNA to DEN79.4%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to DEN70.4%
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record80.6%
- United Airlines on-time record79.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.4%
- 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 DEN and DEN 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.