Carrier route record

OHBNA→PHL

PSA Airlines · Nashville to Philadelphia

Flights: 410
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 6

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

PSA on BNA to PHL lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 410 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,060 at 77.1% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate PSA on BNA to PHL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 389 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.88%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.5%

Every carrier on BNA to PHL, 2,816 flights

These figures cover 410 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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

PSA against every carrier on BNA to PHL

PSA flew 410 of the 2,816 flights on BNA to PHL, about 15% of it. Its 77.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 81.2% to Frontier at 64.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 77.1% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to PHL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	69	81.2%	46 min	0.00%	B+
PSA Airlines (this page)	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 Airlinesthin sample	144	64.0%	77 min	3.47%	D−

American leads Southwest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When PSA runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am59 flights82.5%
8am–11am119 flights83.9%
11am–2pm8 flights—
2pm–5pm49 flights73.9%
5pm–8pm175 flights71.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.9% of the time, against 71.4% for the evening window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 175 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on BNA to PHL through the year

Jul–Sep 20253 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025127 flights71.9%
Jan–Mar 2026108 flights77.0%
Apr–Jun 2026172 flights81.8%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 77.4% on time across 410 flights.

Quarter by quarter PSA on BNA to PHL held fairly steady: 71.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 81.8% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 73.0%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 70% of the 6,555 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
70%
Carrier
20%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

70% 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 6,555 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 6,555 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 83.9% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.88%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 10.3% 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 runs 75.3% on time across 410 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 410 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 PSA on BNA to PHL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.88% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 389 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