Carrier route record
F9BNA→PHL
Frontier Airlines · Nashville to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 144
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on BNA to PHL draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 144 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 410 at 77.4% on time.
PSA Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.4% on time across 410 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on BNA to PHL, 2,816 flights
These figures cover 144 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on BNA to PHL
Frontier flew 144 of the 2,816 flights on BNA to PHL, about 5% of it. Its 64.0% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 81.2% to Frontier at 64.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. PSA Airlines arrives on time 77.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 910 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 81.2% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 410 | 77.4% | 75 min | 4.88% | B− |
| American Airlines | 1,060 | 77.1% | 117 min | 2.55% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 223 | 76.2% | 70 min | 4.04% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 910 | 70.8% | 48 min | 0.88% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 144 | 64.0% | 77 min | 3.47% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.9% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 144 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am14 flights—
- 11am–2pm30 flights—
- 2pm–5pm48 flights59.6%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am51 flights64.0%
Scale runs 50% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 64.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
Frontier on BNA to PHL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202538 flights65.8%
- Oct–Dec 202546 flights69.6%
- Jan–Mar 202638 flights52.8%
- Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 64.0% on time across 144 flights.
Frontier on BNA to PHL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 69.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 52.8%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 48 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 71.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.1%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 75% of the 3,849 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.
- 75%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
75% 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 3,849 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 75 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 3,849 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 675 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 68.3% on time across 144 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 144 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.
What to do with this
Booking Frontier on BNA to PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 139 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to PHL, every carrier
- Frontier on PHL to BNA, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on BNA to PHL77.4%
- American Airlines on BNA to PHL77.1%
- Republic Airways on BNA to PHL76.2%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to PHL70.8%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.