Carrier route record
WNBNA→FLL
Southwest Airlines · Nashville to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,399
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BNA to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,399 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on BNA to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,382 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.4%
Every carrier on BNA to FLL, 2,112 flights
These figures cover 1,399 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 FLL
Southwest flew 1,399 of the 2,112 flights on BNA to FLL, most of the route. Its 75.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 75.9% to Spirit at 74.4%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,399 | 75.9% | 51 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 91 | 74.4% | 59 min | 1.10% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 622 | 74.4% | 80 min | 4.50% | C− |
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 39 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–8am309 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am177 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm287 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm228 flights68.4%
- 5pm–8pm299 flights60.8%
- 8pm–5am99 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 94.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 309 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BNA to FLL through the year
July is the worst month at 65.8% on time, 17 points below January, the best at 83.2%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 132 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.6%. 22 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 53% of the 17,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Security
- 1%Extreme weather
53% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 16,946 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 94.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.7% 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.
The 793 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 71.9% on time across 1,400 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,399 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 Southwest on BNA to FLL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 83.2% on time and July 65.8%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,382 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to FLL, every carrier
- Southwest on FLL to BNA, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on BNA to FLL74.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.