Route reliability record
CHS→BNA
Charleston to Nashville
- Flights
- 989
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 439 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That rests on 989 CHS to BNA flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly CHS to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.1%, against 77.0% 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
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 981 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.0% on time across 989 flights
These figures cover 989 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 CHS 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 989 | 77.0% | 46 min | 0.61% | B+ |
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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 39 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am313 flights96.1%
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm187 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm144 flights69.0%
- 5pm–8pm135 flights67.2%
- 8pm–5am182 flights56.7%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.7% on time, against 96.1% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 313 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CHS to BNA 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 CHS to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.7%, a wide gap of 39.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.1%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm77.4%
- 2–5pm69.0%
- 5–8pm67.2%
- 8pm–5am56.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
July is the worst month at 59.8% on time, 32 points below January, 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. October was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.1%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 to one. The split is drawn from 10,339 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 96.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
At 439 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.3% on time across 991 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 989 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 BNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 989 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 77.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 981 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CHS to BNA questions
How often is CHS to BNA 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 23.0% of the 989 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is CHS to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
77.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CHS to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.7%, 39 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 July delays on CHS to BNA?
July is the weakest month at 59.8% on time, compared with 92.1% in January. Across the year that is 32 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 CHS — the return legseparate record
- Charleston International (CHS) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- CHS to ATL, a related route88.9%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- CHS to CLT, a related route82.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.0%
- 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. CHS to BNA and BNA to CHS 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.