Route reliability record
CLE→BNA
Cleveland to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,041
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 448 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,041 CLE to BNA flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.4%, against 85.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,031 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
85.0% on time across 946 flights
These figures cover 1,041 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLE 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 | 40 | 87.2% | 103 min | 2.50% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 946 | 85.0% | 59 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 55 | 83.3% | 78 min | 1.82% | B |
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 29 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–8am369 flights96.2%
- 8am–11am26 flights—
- 11am–2pm237 flights86.8%
- 2pm–5pm82 flights80.5%
- 5pm–8pm230 flights72.6%
- 8pm–5am97 flights67.0%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.2% of the time, against 67.0% for the overnight window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 369 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 78.0%. February is the strongest month at 91.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 14 points. November was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.7%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 9,467 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
59% 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 9,467 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 9,467 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 96.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.77%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% 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.
At 448 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 74.1% on time across 1,042 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,041 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. 1,041 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 85.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,031 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to BNA questions
How often is CLE to BNA delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.0% of the 1,041 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is CLE to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
85.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.0%, 29 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 March delays on CLE to BNA?
March is the weakest month at 78.0% on time, compared with 91.5% in February. Across the year that is 14 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- ORD to BNA, a related route68.6%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record87.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record83.3%
- 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. CLE to BNA and BNA to CLE 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.