Route reliability record
BNA→MSY
Nashville to New Orleans
- Flights
- 1,498
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 471 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,498 BNA to MSY flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly BNA to MSY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.8% of the time and Saturday flights 85.4%, against 78.9% 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
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,481 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.9% on time across 1,433 flights
These figures cover 1,498 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 MSY
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 | 1,433 | 78.9% | 51 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 65 | 77.8% | 52 min | 3.08% | 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 31 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–8am212 flights94.8%
- 8am–11am175 flights93.6%
- 11am–2pm262 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm273 flights77.1%
- 5pm–8pm238 flights63.5%
- 8pm–5am338 flights73.2%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.5% on time, against 94.8% 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 29 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 89.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 164 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.6%. 15 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 61% 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
61% 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 61 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 16,004 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 94.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.6% 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 471 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 runs 78.0% on time across 1,495 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 1,498 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 MSY 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. September runs 89.1% on time and May 59.8%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,481 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to MSY questions
How often is BNA to MSY delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.1% of the 1,498 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to MSY compared with the rest of the country?
78.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to MSY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.5%, 31 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 MSY?
May is the weakest month at 59.8% on time, compared with 89.1% in September. Across the year that is 29 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
- MSY to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.4%
- ATL to MSY, a related route81.4%
- BNA to DCA, a related route73.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record77.8%
- 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 MSY and MSY 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.