Route reliability record
BNA→TPA
Nashville to Tampa
- Flights
- 2,479
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 612 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,479 BNA to TPA flights, of which Envoy Air flew 715 at 79.5% on time.
Best time to fly BNA to TPA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.6%, against 72.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,450 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
79.5% on time across 715 flights
These figures cover 2,479 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 TPA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 79.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,764 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 715 | 79.5% | 49 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,764 | 69.9% | 51 min | 0.85% | C+ |
Envoy leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Nashville to Tampa
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 → TPANashville to Tampa | Envoy Air | 78.7% | 79.5% | 0.98% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. BNA → TPANashville to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 69.3% | 69.9% | 0.85% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 36 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am370 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am566 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm494 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm458 flights64.5%
- 5pm–8pm444 flights54.4%
- 8pm–5am147 flights59.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.4% on time, against 89.9% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 566 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to TPA 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 TPA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 54.4%, a wide gap of 35.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.9%
- 8–11am84.5%
- 11am–2pm73.9%
- 2–5pm64.5%
- 5–8pm54.4%
- 8pm–5am59.6%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 223 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.6%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 34,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. The split is drawn from 33,860 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 89.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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
6.7% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 612 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.
The return leg runs 74.4% on time across 2,487 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,479 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 TPA 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 86.8% on time and May 61.6%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,450 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to TPA questions
How often is BNA to TPA 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 27.3% of the 2,479 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to TPA?
Envoy Air leads at 79.5% on time across 715 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 69.9%, a gap of 10 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 TPA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 54.4%, 36 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 May delays on BNA to TPA?
May is the weakest month at 61.6% on time, compared with 86.8% in September. Across the year that is 25 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
- TPA to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on BNA to TPA79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to TPA69.9%
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.0%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.9%
- 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 TPA and TPA 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.