Route reliability record
BNA→VPS
Nashville to Valparaiso
- Flights
- 823
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 389 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 823 BNA to VPS flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly BNA to VPS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.3% of the time and Saturday flights 87.5%, against 80.6% 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
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 818 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.24%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.6% on time across 823 flights
These figures cover 823 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BNA to VPS
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 | 823 | 80.6% | 58 min | 0.24% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Nashville to Valparaiso
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BNA → VPSNashville to Valparaiso | Southwest Airlines | 80.4% | 80.6% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. BNA → PNSNashville to Pensacola | Southwest Airlines | 76.3% | 76.9% | 0.83% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. BNA → ECPNashville to Panama City | Southwest Airlines | 73.9% | 74.3% | 0.55% | 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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am18 flights—
- 8am–11am346 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm24 flights—
- 2pm–5pm93 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm308 flights70.2%
- 8pm–5am34 flights67.6%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.3% of the time, against 67.6% for the overnight window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 346 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BNA to VPS 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 VPS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 67.6%, a wide gap of 23.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am91.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm75.3%
- 5–8pm70.2%
- 8pm–5am67.6%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 62.3% on time, 35 points below September, the best at 97.3%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.9%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 70% of the 8,792 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 70%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
70% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,792 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 8,792 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 91.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.24%, 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
6.4% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 389 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 89.2% on time across 823 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 823 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 VPS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 823 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 80.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 818 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BNA to VPS questions
How often is BNA to VPS delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.4% of the 823 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BNA to VPS compared with the rest of the country?
80.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BNA to VPS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.6%, 24 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 VPS?
June is the weakest month at 62.3% on time, compared with 97.3% in September. Across the year that is 35 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
- VPS to BNA — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- BNA to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ATL to VPS, a related route83.8%
- BNA to DCA, a related route71.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.6%
- 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 VPS and VPS 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.