Carrier route record
AADCA→BNA
American Airlines · Washington to Nashville
- Flights
- 313
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DCA to BNA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 313 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, 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
65.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 296 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.1%
Every carrier on DCA to BNA, 4,329 flights
These figures cover 313 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.9% 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
American against every carrier on DCA to BNA
American flew 313 of the 4,329 flights on DCA to BNA, about 7% of it. Its 65.5% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.5% to PSA at 59.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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
When American runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 313 flights.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm13 flights—
- 5pm–8pm126 flights61.0%
- 8pm–5am171 flights68.3%
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 68.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 7 points.
Across the year
American on DCA to BNA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202583 flights67.1%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights65.2%
- Jan–Mar 202691 flights71.6%
- Apr–Jun 202649 flights53.2%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 65.5% on time across 313 flights.
American on DCA to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 53.2%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 78 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.5%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 7,612 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.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,612 reported delay minutes.
63% 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 7,612 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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.
Cancellations run at 5.43%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 78.4% on time across 313 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 313 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 American on DCA to BNA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.43% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 296 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to BNA, every carrier
- American on BNA to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to BNA83.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to BNA75.9%
- Envoy Air on DCA to BNA75.7%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to BNA59.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.