Route reliability record
BNA→PNS
Nashville to Pensacola
- Flights
- 963
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 391 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 963 BNA to PNS flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly BNA to PNS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.4%, against 76.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 952 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.9% on time across 963 flights
These figures cover 963 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to PNS
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 | 963 | 76.9% | 51 min | 0.83% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Nashville to Pensacola
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BNA → VPSNashville to Valparaiso | Southwest Airlines | 80.4% | 80.6% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. BNA → PNSNashville to Pensacola | Southwest Airlines | 76.3% | 76.9% | 0.83% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 33 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am148 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am217 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm106 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm155 flights62.7%
- 5pm–8pm277 flights70.0%
- 8pm–5am60 flights59.3%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.3% on time, against 92.6% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 277 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to PNS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BNA to PNS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.3%, a wide gap of 33.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.6%
- 8–11am88.3%
- 11am–2pm80.0%
- 2–5pm62.7%
- 5–8pm70.0%
- 8pm–5am59.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 38 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.
July is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 38 points below September, the best at 96.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.0%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 11,145 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 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 391 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 77.5% on time across 963 flights, within half a point 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. 963 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PNS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 963 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 76.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 952 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to PNS questions
How often is BNA to PNS delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.1% of the 963 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to PNS compared with the rest of the country?
76.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to PNS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.3%, 33 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 July delays on BNA to PNS?
July is the weakest month at 58.2% on time, compared with 96.3% in September. Across the year that is 38 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
- PNS to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ATL to PNS, a related route82.1%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BNA to PNS and PNS 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.