Route reliability record
BNA→RDU
Nashville to Raleigh
- Flights
- 2,223
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 442 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,223 BNA to RDU flights, of which Republic Airways flew 956 at 76.7% on time.
Best time to fly BNA to RDU: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.3%, against 74.8% 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
74.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,176 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
76.7% on time across 956 flights
These figures cover 2,223 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to RDU
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 956 | 76.7% | 61 min | 3.14% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,267 | 73.4% | 48 min | 0.95% | C+ |
Republic Airways cancels 3.1% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on BNA to RDU
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Nashville to Raleigh
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BNA → RDUNashville to Raleigh | Republic Airways | 74.3% | 76.7% | 3.14% | 5am–8am, Wed | YX 4596 16:53 |
| 2. BNA → RDUNashville to Raleigh | Southwest Airlines | 72.7% | 73.4% | 0.95% | 8am–11am, 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 32 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am223 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am368 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm414 flights78.1%
- 2pm–5pm414 flights75.2%
- 5pm–8pm661 flights65.7%
- 8pm–5am143 flights55.4%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.4% on time, against 87.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 661 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to RDU 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 RDU, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 87.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.4%, a wide gap of 32.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am86.0%
- 8–11am87.4%
- 11am–2pm78.1%
- 2–5pm75.2%
- 5–8pm65.7%
- 8pm–5am55.4%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
August is the worst month at 63.3% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 87.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.4%, a spread of 18 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 29,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 28,947 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 87.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.89% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.7% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 442 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.9% on time across 2,224 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,223 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in RDU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.4% on time and August 63.3%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,176 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to RDU questions
How often is BNA to RDU delayed?
About 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 25.2% of the 2,223 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to RDU?
Republic Airways leads at 76.7% on time across 956 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 73.4%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to RDU?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.4%, 32 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 August delays on BNA to RDU?
August is the weakest month at 63.3% on time, compared with 87.4% in September. Across the year that is 24 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
- RDU to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on BNA to RDU76.7%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to RDU73.4%
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.0%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.4%
- 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 RDU and RDU 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.