Carrier route record

WNBNA→LGA

Southwest Airlines · Nashville to New York

Flights: 1,455
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 38%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on BNA to LGA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,455 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 Southwest on BNA to LGA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 91 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,403 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.27%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.7%

Every carrier on BNA to LGA, 3,785 flights

These figures cover 1,455 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on BNA to LGA

Southwest flew 1,455 of the 3,785 flights on BNA to LGA, about 38% of it. Its 68.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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 choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 73.7% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 65.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 450 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to LGA
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 (this page)	1,455	68.2%	55 min	2.27%	C
Delta Air Lines	450	65.9%	108 min	4.89%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	112	65.7%	126 min	4.46%	C−

Delta Air Lines cancels 4.9% 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.

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Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am354 flights87.6%
8am–11am182 flights75.1%
11am–2pm319 flights62.8%
2pm–5pm130 flights57.6%
5pm–8pm306 flights56.5%
8pm–5am164 flights58.6%

Scale runs 50% to 95%.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.5% on time, against 87.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 354 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on BNA to LGA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, March worst

September is the best month on the calendar at 88.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 134 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.8%, a spread of 19 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on BNA to LGA runs when it is late

The 446 late arrivals split 162 under half an hour, 157 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 127 an hour or more.

15+ min early241 flights17.2%
Within 15 min716 flights51.0%
15–29 min late162 flights11.5%
30–59 min late157 flights11.2%
1–2 hours late90 flights6.4%
2+ hours late37 flights2.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,403 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

136 of 525 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. 57 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on BNA to LGA

The latest arrival of the period was on 18 July 2026, 7 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on BNA to LGA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
18 July 2026	7 hours 44 minutes	Carrier
27 March 2026	5 hours 29 minutes	National Airspace System
19 December 2025	4 hours 54 minutes	National Airspace System
29 March 2026	4 hours 37 minutes	National Airspace System
10 August 2026	4 hours 27 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

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 25,000 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 9,148 minutes out of 25,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 24,597 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 87.6% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.27% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.31%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

9.1% 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 runs 66.9% on time across 1,455 flights, within about 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 1,455 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on BNA to LGA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 88.8% on time and March 50.9%, a swing of 38 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,403 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures