Route reliability record
BNA→MCI
Nashville to Kansas City
- Flights
- 1,374
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 491 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,374 BNA to MCI flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly BNA to MCI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.6% of the time and Saturday flights 86.5%, against 76.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,359 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.5% on time across 1,371 flights
These figures cover 1,374 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 MCI
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,371 | 76.5% | 51 min | 0.80% | B+ |
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 44 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am183 flights95.6%
- 8am–11am193 flights94.2%
- 11am–2pm307 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm127 flights76.0%
- 5pm–8pm226 flights51.1%
- 8pm–5am338 flights68.3%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.1% on time, against 95.6% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 338 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 61.2% on time, 35 points below January, the best at 95.7%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.6%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 16,000 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.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
64% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 16,326 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 95.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, below the national 1.81% 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
6.2% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 491 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 82.1% on time across 1,368 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,374 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 MCI 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 95.7% on time and June 61.2%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,359 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to MCI questions
How often is BNA to MCI delayed?
About 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 23.5% of the 1,374 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to MCI compared with the rest of the country?
76.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to MCI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.1%, 44 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 MCI?
June is the weakest month at 61.2% on time, compared with 95.7% in January. Across the year that is 35 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
- MCI to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.4%
- DEN to MCI, a related route75.5%
- BNA to DCA, a related route73.3%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BNA to MCI and MCI 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.