Carrier route record
NKBNA→DTW
Spirit Airlines · Nashville to Detroit
- Flights
- 148
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on BNA to DTW lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 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 148 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,404 at 86.1% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Spirit's BNA to DTW record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 147 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.1%
Every carrier on BNA to DTW, 2,420 flights
These figures cover 148 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
Spirit against every carrier on BNA to DTW
Spirit flew 148 of the 2,420 flights on BNA to DTW, about 6% of it. Its 82.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.1% to SkyWest at 50.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 846 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,404 | 86.1% | 99 min | 1.92% | A |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin 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+ |
The spread between Delta and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Spirit runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am28 flights—
- 8am–11am49 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm32 flights56.2%
- 2pm–5pm18 flights—
- 5pm–8pm21 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 56.2% on time against 85.7% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 49 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on BNA to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202561 flights90.2%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights78.5%
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.3% on time across 148 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on BNA to DTW logged 61 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 80 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 82.3% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.4%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 1,847 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
59% 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 1,847 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 1,847 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 85.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs
6.8% 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 last a little over an hour, 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.9% on time across 146 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 148 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 Spirit on BNA to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 148 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 82.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 147 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to DTW, every carrier
- Spirit on DTW to BNA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on BNA to DTW86.1%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to DTW68.0%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.