Route reliability record
BNA→MKE
Nashville to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 974
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 475 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 974 BNA to MKE flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly BNA to MKE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.5%, against 70.9% 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 64 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 963 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.92%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
70.9% on time across 974 flights
These figures cover 974 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 MKE
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 974 | 70.9% | 51 min | 0.92% | 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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am323 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm31 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm226 flights56.9%
- 5pm–8pm137 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am247 flights62.3%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.2% of the time, against 56.9% for the afternoon window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 323 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to MKE 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 MKE, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 56.9%, a wide gap of 29.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am86.2%
- 11am–2pm80.6%
- 2–5pm56.9%
- 5–8pm69.6%
- 8pm–5am62.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.7%, a spread of 18 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
67% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 to one. The split is drawn from 14,141 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 86.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 475 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.7% on time across 976 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 974 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MKE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 974 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 70.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 963 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to MKE questions
How often is BNA to MKE delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.1% of the 974 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to MKE compared with the rest of the country?
70.9% 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 MKE?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 56.9%, 29 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 May delays on BNA to MKE?
May is the weakest month at 54.5% on time, compared with 89.6% in September. 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
- MKE to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Milwaukee Mitchell International (MKE) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ORD to MKE, a related route64.3%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.9%
- 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 MKE and MKE 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.