Route reliability record
BNA→RSW
Nashville to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 785
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 722 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 785 BNA to RSW flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly BNA to RSW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.3%, against 75.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 775 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.5% on time across 785 flights
These figures cover 785 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to RSW
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 | 785 | 75.5% | 48 min | 0.76% | B+ |
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am99 flights97.9%
- 8am–11am130 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm170 flights69.2%
- 2pm–5pm147 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm194 flights64.6%
- 8pm–5am45 flights75.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.6% on time, against 97.9% 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 194 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
June is the worst month at 51.6% on time, 34 points below September, the best at 85.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.5%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 9,176 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
59% 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 9,176 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 9,176 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 97.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, 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 actually costs
5.9% 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 722 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 79.4% on time across 784 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 785 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 RSW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 785 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 75.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 775 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to RSW questions
How often is BNA to RSW 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 24.5% of the 785 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is BNA to RSW compared with the rest of the country?
75.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to RSW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.6%, 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 June delays on BNA to RSW?
June is the weakest month at 51.6% on time, compared with 85.3% in September. Across the year that is 34 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
- RSW to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.4%
- ORD to RSW, a related route76.1%
- BNA to DCA, a related route73.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BNA to RSW and RSW 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.