Route reliability record
CLT→BNA
Charlotte to Nashville
- Flights
- 3,480
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 328 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,480 CLT to BNA flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 416 at 78.4% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.3%, against 75.1% for the route overall.
PSA Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.4% on time across 416 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,421 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
78.4% on time across 416 flights
These figures cover 3,480 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to BNA
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 32 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 10 | 90.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 83.3% | 219 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 416 | 78.4% | 58 min | 2.88% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,229 | 74.6% | 74 min | 1.39% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 787 | 73.4% | 58 min | 1.52% | C |
No carrier stands out. PSA tops the table at 78.4%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Nashville
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → BNACharlotte to Nashville | PSA Airlines | 76.1% | 78.4% | 2.88% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. CLT → BNACharlotte to Nashville | American Airlines | 73.6% | 74.6% | 1.39% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. CLT → BNACharlotte to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 72.3% | 73.4% | 1.52% | 5am–8am, 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 27 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am613 flights85.0%
- 11am–2pm604 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm575 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm577 flights65.7%
- 8pm–5am746 flights64.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.3% on time, against 91.4% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 746 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT 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 CLT to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 64.3%, a wide gap of 27.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.4%
- 8–11am85.0%
- 11am–2pm79.6%
- 2–5pm72.7%
- 5–8pm65.7%
- 8pm–5am64.3%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 60.6% on time, 25 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 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.8%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 58,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 58,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 58,285 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 91.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.2% on time across 3,479 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,480 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. January runs 85.5% on time and July 60.6%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,421 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.9% of the 3,480 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to BNA?
PSA Airlines leads at 78.4% on time across 416 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 73.4%, a gap of 5 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 91.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.3%, 27 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 CLT to BNA?
July is the weakest month at 60.6% on time, compared with 85.5% in January. Across the year that is 25 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 CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on CLT to BNA78.4%
- American Airlines on CLT to BNA74.6%
- Southwest Airlines on CLT to BNA73.4%
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record90.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.
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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.