Route reliability record
BWI→BNA
Baltimore to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,836
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 587 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,836 BWI to BNA flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly BWI to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.3% of the time and Saturday flights 83.3%, against 80.5% 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
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,798 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.4% on time across 1,761 flights
These figures cover 1,836 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 BWI to BNA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 75 | 82.2% | 70 min | 2.67% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,761 | 80.4% | 57 min | 1.76% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Baltimore to Nashville
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → BNAWashington to Nashville | United Airlines | 82.7% | 83.3% | 0.75% | 8am–11am, Sat (route) | UA 2264 17:55 |
| 2. DCA → BNAWashington to Nashville | Republic Airways | 81.6% | 83.5% | 2.26% | 5am–8am, Mon | YX 4686 11:34 |
| 3. BWI → BNABaltimore to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 79.0% | 80.4% | 1.76% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
| 4. DCA → BNAWashington to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 74.4% | 75.9% | 2.00% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. DCA → BNAWashington to Nashville | PSA Airlines | 53.2% | 59.2% | 10.08% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 22 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–8am257 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am472 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm229 flights72.7%
- 2pm–5pm278 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm385 flights71.3%
- 8pm–5am215 flights74.9%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 71.3% for the evening window. That is 22 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 472 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 70.3% on time, 22 points below February, the best at 92.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.3%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
38% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 20,149 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 7,187 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 587 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 78.4% on time across 1,834 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 1,836 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 BNA 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. February runs 92.1% on time and June 70.3%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,798 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BWI to BNA questions
How often is BWI to BNA 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 19.5% of the 1,836 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BWI to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
80.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 BWI to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.3%, 22 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 BWI to BNA?
June is the weakest month at 70.3% on time, compared with 92.1% in February. Across the year that is 22 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
- BNA to BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- BWI to ATL, a related route80.6%
- ORD to BNA, a related route68.6%
- BWI to MCO, a related route75.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record82.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.4%
- 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. BWI to BNA and BNA to BWI 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.