Carrier route record
WNCLT→BNA
Southwest Airlines · Charlotte to Nashville
- Flights
- 717
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on CLT to BNA 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 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 717 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 531 at 80.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on CLT to BNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 705 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.67%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.1%
Every carrier on CLT to BNA, 3,525 flights
These figures cover 717 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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
Southwest against every carrier on CLT to BNA
Southwest flew 717 of the 3,525 flights on CLT to BNA, about 20% of it. Its 75.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to American at 75.1%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two 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.
| 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 (this page) | 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
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 50 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am158 flights97.4%
- 8am–11am173 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm106 flights85.6%
- 2pm–5pm44 flights63.6%
- 5pm–8pm92 flights54.4%
- 8pm–5am144 flights47.5%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.5% on time, against 97.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 173 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on CLT to BNA through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 97.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 80 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.3%. 23 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 8,500 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
62% 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 8,500 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 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 8,500 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 97.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.67% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.5% 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 roughly 50 minutes, 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 76.3% on time across 718 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 717 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on CLT to BNA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 717 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 75.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 705 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to BNA, every carrier
- Southwest on BNA to CLT, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on CLT to BNA80.7%
- American Airlines on CLT to BNA75.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.