Carrier route record

DLBNA→MSP

Delta Air Lines · Nashville to Minneapolis

Flights: 1,213
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 70%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on BNA to MSP 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,213 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BNA to MSP record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 93 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,193 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.57%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.3%

Every carrier on BNA to MSP, 1,721 flights

These figures cover 1,213 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 MSP

Delta flew 1,213 of the 1,721 flights on BNA to MSP, most of the route. Its 86.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.9% to Southwest at 74.6%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,213	86.9%	64 min	1.57%	A
Southwest Airlines	508	74.6%	44 min	0.98%	C+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on BNA to MSP

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 17 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–8am365 flights96.1%
8am–11am335 flights87.8%
11am–2pm15 flights—
2pm–5pm211 flights81.0%
5pm–8pm287 flights78.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 78.8% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on BNA to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 74.4% on time, against 94.9% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 115 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.2%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 10,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
1%

47% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 10,052 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 3,449 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.57% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% 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.

The 695 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.6% on time across 1,213 flights, 4 points below 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.

The sample behind these figures is 1,213 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 Delta on BNA to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 94.9% on time and December 74.4%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,193 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures