Route reliability record
BNA→JAX
Nashville to Jacksonville
- Flights
- 1,103
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 483 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,103 BNA to JAX flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly BNA to JAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 77.7%, against 71.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,094 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
71.1% on time across 1,085 flights
These figures cover 1,103 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to JAX
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 18 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,085 | 71.1% | 49 min | 0.55% | C+ |
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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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am90 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am277 flights85.0%
- 11am–2pm139 flights63.3%
- 2pm–5pm213 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm252 flights64.5%
- 8pm–5am132 flights62.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.3% on time, against 93.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 277 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to JAX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BNA to JAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.3%, a wide gap of 31.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.3%
- 8–11am85.0%
- 11am–2pm63.3%
- 2–5pm64.3%
- 5–8pm64.5%
- 8pm–5am62.3%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
August is the worst month at 54.6% on time, 34 points below January, the best at 88.9%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.1%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 to one. The split is drawn from 15,077 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 93.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 483 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 80.0% on time across 1,119 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,103 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 JAX 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. January runs 88.9% on time and August 54.6%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,094 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to JAX questions
How often is BNA to JAX delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.4% of the 1,103 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to JAX compared with the rest of the country?
71.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to JAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.3%, 31 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 August delays on BNA to JAX?
August is the weakest month at 54.6% on time, compared with 88.9% in January. Across the year that is 34 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
- JAX to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Jacksonville International (JAX) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ATL to JAX, a related route75.1%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Allegiant Air on-time record100.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BNA to JAX and JAX 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.