Route reliability record
DCA→BNA
Washington to Nashville
- Flights
- 4,329
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 562 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 4,329 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,861 at 83.5% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.5% on time across 1,861 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,189 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.03%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
83.5% on time across 1,861 flights
These figures cover 4,329 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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 DCA to BNA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 83.5% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 59.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 387 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,861 | 83.5% | 61 min | 2.26% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,653 | 75.9% | 63 min | 2.00% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 115 | 75.7% | 65 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 313 | 65.5% | 75 min | 5.43% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 387 | 59.2% | 78 min | 10.08% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 10.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 24 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am616 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am900 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm650 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm785 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm707 flights64.5%
- 8pm–5am671 flights72.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 93.2% 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 900 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 May, when the on-time rate falls to 69.7%. August is the strongest month at 84.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 15 points. October was the busiest month here, with 386 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.4%. 11 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 57% of the 63,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% 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 63,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 62,987 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.03%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% 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.
The 562 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.3% on time across 4,330 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,329 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.03% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 4,189 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to BNA questions
How often is DCA to BNA delayed?
Roughly 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 22.9% of the 4,329 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DCA to BNA?
Republic Airways leads at 83.5% on time across 1,861 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 59.2%, a gap of 24 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 DCA to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.5%, 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 May delays on DCA to BNA?
May is the weakest month at 69.7% on time, compared with 84.4% in August. Across the year that is 15 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 DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record83.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.7%
- 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. DCA to BNA and BNA to DCA 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.