Route reliability record

CLT→BNA

Charlotte to Nashville

Flights: 3,525
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 328 mi
Carriers: 6

This route lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrive 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 3,525 flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 531 at 80.7% on time.

PSA Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.7% on time across 531 flights.

On time

76.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,466 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.62%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

PSA

80.7% on time across 531 flights

These figures cover 3,525 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Which airline is most reliable on CLT to BNA

The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on CLT to BNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	11	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	26	84.6%	78 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	6	83.3%	219 min	0.00%	B+
PSA Airlines	531	80.7%	58 min	2.07%	B
Southwest Airlines	717	75.2%	49 min	1.67%	B
American Airlines	2,234	75.1%	71 min	1.52%	B

No carrier stands out. PSA tops the table at 80.7%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 25 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am383 flights91.0%
8am–11am647 flights86.5%
11am–2pm589 flights80.2%
2pm–5pm588 flights74.4%
5pm–8pm563 flights65.6%
8pm–5am755 flights65.6%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.0% of the time, against 65.6% for the overnight window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 755 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 18 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, June worst

June is the worst month at 68.0% on time, 18 points below January, the best at 85.5%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 336 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.8%. 10 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 56% of the 54,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

56% 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 54,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 53,705 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 91.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.62% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

8.8% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 328 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 runs 78.7% on time across 3,525 flights, within 3 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 3,525 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.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.5% on time and June 68.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,466 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

CLT to BNA questions

How often is CLT to BNA delayed?

About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.9% of the 3,525 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on CLT to BNA?

PSA Airlines leads at 80.7% on time across 531 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 75.1%, a gap of 6 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 CLT to BNA?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.6%, 25 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 CLT to BNA?

June is the weakest month at 68.0% on time, compared with 85.5% in January. Across the year that is 18 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. CLT to BNA and BNA to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures