Route reliability record
BNA→IAH
Nashville to Houston
- Flights
- 1,405
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 657 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,405 BNA to IAH flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 395 at 87.4% on time.
Best time to fly BNA to IAH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.2%, against 82.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,392 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.4% on time across 395 flights
These figures cover 1,405 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
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to IAH
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 395 | 87.4% | 96 min | 1.27% | A |
| United Airlines | 997 | 81.7% | 82 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 8.3% | 37 min | 7.69% | F− |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 87.4%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on BNA to IAH
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.
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. 1 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 22 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am360 flights88.0%
- 8am–11am447 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm164 flights82.9%
- 2pm–5pm209 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm223 flights73.3%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 67.8% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 447 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 66.9% on time, 29 points below September, the best at 95.4%. 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 142 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 7,566 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,847 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 89.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.5% 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.
The 657 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 72.2% on time across 1,405 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,405 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 IAH 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. September runs 95.4% on time and June 66.9%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,392 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to IAH questions
How often is BNA to IAH delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.3% of the 1,405 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to IAH?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 87.4% on time across 395 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 81.7%, a gap of 6 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 IAH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.8%, 22 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 IAH?
June is the weakest month at 66.9% on time, compared with 95.4% in September. Across the year that is 29 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
- IAH to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on BNA to IAH87.4%
- United Airlines on BNA to IAH81.7%
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.4%
- ORD to IAH, a related route75.0%
- BNA to DCA, a related route73.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.4%
- United Airlines on-time record81.7%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record8.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. BNA to IAH and IAH 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.