Carrier route record
DLBNA→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Nashville to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,220
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 69%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,220 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BNA to MSP record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,197 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.2%
Every carrier on BNA to MSP, 1,776 flights
These figures cover 1,220 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on BNA to MSP
Delta flew 1,220 of the 1,776 flights on BNA to MSP, most of the route. Its 85.6% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.6% to Southwest at 71.5%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,220 | 85.6% | 56 min | 1.89% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 556 | 71.5% | 44 min | 1.08% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on BNA to MSP
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights95.3%
- 8am–11am335 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm15 flights—
- 2pm–5pm218 flights77.9%
- 5pm–8pm287 flights77.3%
- 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 95.3% of the time, against 77.3% for the evening window. That is 18 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
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. August was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.2%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on BNA to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on BNA to MSP often beats the schedule: 393 of 1,197 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 172 late arrivals split 77 under half an hour, 46 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 49 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early393 flights32.8%
- Within 15 min632 flights52.8%
- 15–29 min late77 flights6.4%
- 30–59 min late46 flights3.8%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights2.8%
- 2+ hours late16 flights1.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,197 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 139 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. 50 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on BNA to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 May 2026, 10 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 May 2026 | 10 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 6 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 December 2025 | 4 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 August 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 June 2026 | 3 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 9,625 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,625 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 9,625 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 95.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.89% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg runs 82.9% on time across 1,220 flights, within 3 points 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 1,220 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. 1,197 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to BNA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to MSP71.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.