Carrier route record
WNBNA→PHL
Southwest Airlines · Nashville to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 910
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BNA to PHL sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 910 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 410 at 77.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on BNA to PHL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 902 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on BNA to PHL, 2,816 flights
These figures cover 910 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on BNA to PHL
Southwest flew 910 of the 2,816 flights on BNA to PHL, about 32% of it. Its 70.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five 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 two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| 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 (this page) | 910 | 70.8% | 48 min | 0.88% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin 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 Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 45 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–8am—
- 8am–11am318 flights90.5%
- 11am–2pm95 flights75.8%
- 2pm–5pm189 flights61.7%
- 5pm–8pm192 flights60.2%
- 8pm–5am116 flights45.1%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 45.1% on time, against 90.5% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 318 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BNA to PHL through the year
June is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 40 points below September, the best at 89.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.0%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 13,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
52% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 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 12,670 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 90.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% 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.
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 78.1% on time across 910 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 910 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 Southwest on BNA to PHL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 910 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 70.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 902 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to PHL, every carrier
- Southwest 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%
- Frontier Airlines on BNA to PHL64.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.