Carrier route record
DLBNA→LGA
Delta Air Lines · Nashville to New York
- Flights
- 450
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on BNA to LGA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 450 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,658 at 73.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on BNA to LGA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 425 completed flights
Avg delay
108 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.7%
Every carrier on BNA to LGA, 3,785 flights
These figures cover 450 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on BNA to LGA
Delta flew 450 of the 3,785 flights on BNA to LGA, about 12% of it. Its 65.9% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.7% to American at 65.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlinesthin sample | 110 | 81.7% | 66 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airways | 1,658 | 73.7% | 73 min | 4.70% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,455 | 68.2% | 55 min | 2.27% | C |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 450 | 65.9% | 108 min | 4.89% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 112 | 65.7% | 126 min | 4.46% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 34 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am84 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm137 flights53.1%
- 5pm–8pm175 flights65.9%
- 8pm–5am49 flights61.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.7% of the time, against 53.1% for the afternoon window. That is 34 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 175 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on BNA to LGA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202543 flights79.1%
- Oct–Dec 2025202 flights66.5%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights75.8%
- Apr–Jun 202678 flights62.8%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights44.0%
Scale runs 35% to 85%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 65.9% on time across 450 flights.
Delta on BNA to LGA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 79.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 44.0%, a swing of 35 points on roughly 90 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 54.9%, a spread of 20 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on BNA to LGA runs when it is late
Delta on BNA to LGA often beats the schedule: 154 of 425 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Delta on BNA to LGA is late it tends to be very late: 77 of its 145 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 33 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early154 flights36.2%
- Within 15 min126 flights29.6%
- 15–29 min late28 flights6.6%
- 30–59 min late40 flights9.4%
- 1–2 hours late44 flights10.4%
- 2+ hours late33 flights7.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 425 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 146 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on BNA to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 14 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 14 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 June 2026 | 14 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 November 2025 | 14 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 October 2025 | 14 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 April 2026 | 13 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 15,606 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 86.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.89%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
18.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 764 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.3% on time across 450 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 450 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 LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.89% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 425 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to LGA, every carrier
- Delta on LGA to BNA, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on BNA to LGA81.7%
- Republic Airways on BNA to LGA73.7%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to LGA68.2%
- American Airlines on BNA to LGA65.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.