Carrier route record
DLBNA→SLC
Delta Air Lines · Nashville to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 933
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 77%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on BNA to SLC earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 933 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BNA to SLC record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 926 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.4%
Every carrier on BNA to SLC, 1,205 flights
These figures cover 933 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Delta against every carrier on BNA to SLC
Delta flew 933 of the 1,205 flights on BNA to SLC, most of the route. Its 87.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.5% to Southwest at 74.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 933 | 87.5% | 54 min | 0.64% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 272 | 74.1% | 57 min | 0.74% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on BNA to SLC
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 933 flights.
- 5am–8am362 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm26 flights—
- 2pm–5pm208 flights85.6%
- 5pm–8pm337 flights85.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 90.5% on time for the 5am–8am window against 85.0% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on BNA to SLC through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 82.7%. August is the strongest month at 95.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 12 points. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 6,308 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,996 of the 6,308 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,308 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 90.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,404 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 runs 85.4% on time across 933 flights, within 2 points 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. 933 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 Delta on BNA to SLC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 933 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 87.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 926 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to SLC, every carrier
- Delta on SLC to BNA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to SLC74.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.