Carrier route record
DLBNA→LAX
Delta Air Lines · Nashville to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 909
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on BNA to LAX earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 909 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 413 at 72.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BNA to LAX record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 897 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on BNA to LAX, 2,317 flights
These figures cover 909 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Delta against every carrier on BNA to LAX
Delta flew 909 of the 2,317 flights on BNA to LAX, about 39% of it. Its 85.5% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.5% to Southwest at 70.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 909 | 85.5% | 61 min | 1.32% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 80.6% | 124 min | 1.47% | B |
| American Airlines | 413 | 72.0% | 95 min | 0.73% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 927 | 70.7% | 43 min | 0.65% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 72.0%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on BNA to LAX
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am340 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am25 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm352 flights82.7%
- 5pm–8pm93 flights71.0%
- 8pm–5am99 flights84.4%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.0% of the time, against 71.0% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on BNA to LAX through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 64.3%. March is the strongest month at 94.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 31 points. May was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 89.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 7,884 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 3,808 of the 7,884 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,884 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.32% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% 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.
At 1,798 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 85.8% on time across 909 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 909 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 Delta on BNA to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 909 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 85.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 897 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to BNA, the return leg
- American Airlines on BNA to LAX72.0%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to LAX70.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- 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
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.