Route reliability record
BNA→HOU
Nashville to Houston
- Flights
- 1,793
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 670 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,793 BNA to HOU flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly BNA to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.1% of the time and Saturday flights 80.7%, against 78.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,779 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.67%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.0% on time across 1,793 flights
These figures cover 1,793 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to HOU
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 | 1,793 | 78.0% | 45 min | 0.67% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Nashville to Houston
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BNA → IAHNashville to Houston | SkyWest Airlines | 86.3% | 87.4% | 1.27% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4746 06:15 |
| 2. BNA → IAHNashville to Houston | United Airlines | 81.1% | 81.7% | 0.70% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. BNA → HOUNashville to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 77.5% | 78.0% | 0.67% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 32 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–8am473 flights95.1%
- 8am–11am181 flights93.3%
- 11am–2pm272 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm175 flights62.9%
- 5pm–8pm352 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am340 flights69.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.1% of the time, against 62.9% for the afternoon window. That is 32 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 473 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 57.4% on time, 30 points below February, the best at 87.6%. 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 167 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.0%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 18,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 17,719 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 95.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.67%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 670 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 runs 77.7% on time across 1,801 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 1,793 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 HOU 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. February runs 87.6% on time and June 57.4%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,779 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to HOU questions
How often is BNA to HOU delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.0% of the 1,793 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
78.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 62.9%, 32 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 HOU?
June is the weakest month at 57.4% on time, compared with 87.6% in February. Across the year that is 30 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
- HOU to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.4%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- BNA to DCA, a related route73.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.0%
- 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 HOU and HOU 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.