Carrier route record

AADCA→BNA

American Airlines · Washington to Nashville

Flights: 290
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on DCA to BNA draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 290 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,845 at 81.8% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.8% on time across 1,845 flights.

On time

63.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 276 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.83%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.7%

Every carrier on DCA to BNA, 4,384 flights

These figures cover 290 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on DCA to BNA

American flew 290 of the 4,384 flights on DCA to BNA, about 7% of it. Its 63.8% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.8% to PSA at 60.1%. 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 81.8% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 60.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 399 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to BNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	1,845	81.8%	64 min	2.44%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	143	76.6%	58 min	1.40%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,707	74.4%	58 min	2.23%	C
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	290	63.8%	82 min	4.83%	D−
PSA Airlines	399	60.1%	78 min	8.77%	D−

PSA Airlines cancels 8.8% 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.

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against 22 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am1 flights—
8am–11am7 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm16 flights—
5pm–8pm151 flights58.7%
8pm–5am115 flights69.6%

Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.7% on time, against 69.6% for the 8pm–5am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 151 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DCA to BNA through the year

Jul–Sep 202526 flights—
Oct–Dec 202590 flights65.2%
Jan–Mar 202691 flights71.6%
Apr–Jun 202649 flights53.2%
Jul–Sep 202634 flights51.5%

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 63.8% on time across 290 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 Jul–Sep 2026 at 51.5%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 73 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 80.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.4%, a spread of 24 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on DCA to BNA runs when it is late

American on DCA to BNA often beats the schedule: 70 of 276 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When American on DCA to BNA is late it tends to be very late: 51 of its 100 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 19 were two hours or more.

15+ min early70 flights25.4%
Within 15 min106 flights38.4%
15–29 min late21 flights7.6%
30–59 min late28 flights10.1%
1–2 hours late32 flights11.6%
2+ hours late19 flights6.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 276 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 99 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 9 made it up before arrival. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for American on DCA to BNA

The latest arrival of the period was on 19 May 2026, 8 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of American on DCA to BNA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
19 May 2026	8 hours 46 minutes	Extreme weather
9 July 2026	5 hours 53 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
2 August 2026	5 hours 22 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
6 July 2026	4 hours 44 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
11 June 2026	3 hours 56 minutes	Extreme weather

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 8,197 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
66%
Carrier
14%
Extreme weather
10%
National Airspace System
9%

66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,197 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 8,197 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 4.83%, against 1.89% 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

18.5% 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.

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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.9% on time across 291 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 290 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 4.83% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 276 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures