Carrier route record

WNBNA→RDU

Southwest Airlines · Nashville to Raleigh

Flights: 1,261
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 57%
Carriers: 2

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

Southwest on BNA to RDU sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,261 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

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

On time

75.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,244 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.19%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.5%

Every carrier on BNA to RDU, 2,213 flights

These figures cover 1,261 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 RDU

Southwest flew 1,261 of the 2,213 flights on BNA to RDU, most of the route. Its 75.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 75.5% to Republic at 75.5%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to RDU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	1,261	75.5%	47 min	1.19%	B
Republic Airways	952	75.5%	59 min	2.84%	B

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 31 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–11am359 flights88.5%
11am–2pm60 flights76.7%
2pm–5pm356 flights77.6%
5pm–8pm364 flights66.2%
8pm–5am122 flights58.0%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.0% on time, against 88.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on BNA to RDU through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, June worst

June is the worst month at 66.0% on time, 26 points below January, the best at 91.8%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.2%. 19 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 60% of the 14,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
60%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
2%

60% 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 14,000 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 14,420 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 88.5% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.8% 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 45 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 81.3% on time across 1,259 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,261 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on BNA to RDU

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 91.8% on time and June 66.0%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,244 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