Carrier route record

YXBNA→PHL

Republic Airways · Nashville to Philadelphia

Flights: 223
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 6

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

Republic on BNA to PHL lands a B−, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 223 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.

On time

76.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 214 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.04%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.5%

Every carrier on BNA to PHL, 2,816 flights

These figures cover 223 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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

Republic against every carrier on BNA to PHL

Republic flew 223 of the 2,816 flights on BNA to PHL, about 8% of it. Its 76.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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.

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	410	77.4%	75 min	4.88%	B−
American Airlines	1,060	77.1%	117 min	2.55%	B
Republic Airways (this page)thin 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−

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 Republic runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am3 flights—
8am–11am55 flights84.9%
11am–2pm27 flights—
2pm–5pm76 flights75.0%
5pm–8pm62 flights64.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.4% on time, against 84.9% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 76 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on BNA to PHL through the year

Jul–Sep 202531 flights83.3%
Oct–Dec 202523 flights—
Jan–Mar 2026149 flights73.2%
Apr–Jun 202620 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 76.2% on time across 223 flights.

Split by quarter, Republic on BNA to PHL logged 31 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 23 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 149 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 20 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 76.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.7%. 24 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 3,563 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
63%
Carrier
20%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
9%

63% 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 3,563 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 3,563 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 84.9% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 9.8% 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 86.3% on time across 224 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 223 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 Republic on BNA to PHL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.04% 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. 214 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