Carrier route record

DLBNA→DTW

Delta Air Lines · Nashville to Detroit

Flights: 1,404
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 58%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on BNA to DTW earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,404 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BNA to DTW record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 85 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,377 completed flights

Avg delay

99 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.92%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.1%

Every carrier on BNA to DTW, 2,420 flights

These figures cover 1,404 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

Delta against every carrier on BNA to DTW

Delta flew 1,404 of the 2,420 flights on BNA to DTW, most of the route. Its 86.1% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.1% to SkyWest at 50.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,404	86.1%	99 min	1.92%	A
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	148	82.3%	71 min	0.68%	B+
Southwest Airlines	846	68.0%	44 min	0.24%	C+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	22	50.0%	45 min	0.00%	F+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on BNA to DTW

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 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–8am365 flights94.8%
8am–11am361 flights88.0%
11am–2pm58 flights79.3%
2pm–5pm268 flights86.3%
5pm–8pm352 flights75.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.8% of the time, against 75.9% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on BNA to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, December worst

December is the weak month at 74.1% on time, against 97.5% in August. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 139 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.7%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 19,000 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.

Carrier
44%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
3%

38% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 19,036 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 8,359 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.1% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 456 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.5% on time across 1,403 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,404 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 Delta on BNA to DTW

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 97.5% on time and December 74.1%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,377 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures