Route reliability record
DFW→BNA
Dallas-Fort Worth to Nashville
- Flights
- 3,544
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 631 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route 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 3,544 DFW to BNA flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DFW to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.5%, against 67.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,442 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.74%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
66.2% on time across 3,122 flights
These figures cover 3,544 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 DFW to BNA
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 214 | 79.2% | 50 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 97 | 75.8% | 85 min | 6.19% | B− |
| American Airlines | 3,122 | 66.2% | 70 min | 2.59% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 63.2% | 136 min | 5.00% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 91 | 59.5% | 83 min | 7.69% | D− |
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas-Fort Worth to Nashville
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DAL → BNADallas to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 69.7% | 70.7% | 1.39% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DFW → BNADallas-Fort Worth to Nashville | American Airlines | 64.5% | 66.2% | 2.59% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am458 flights83.2%
- 8am–11am649 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm525 flights66.0%
- 2pm–5pm667 flights61.0%
- 5pm–8pm676 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am569 flights56.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.2% on time, against 83.2% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 676 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW 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 DFW to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.2%, a wide gap of 27.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.2%
- 8–11am81.7%
- 11am–2pm66.0%
- 2–5pm61.0%
- 5–8pm57.6%
- 8pm–5am56.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 49.7% on time, 32 points below February, the best at 81.2%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 327 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.9%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 79,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 79,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 79,134 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 83.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.74%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
12.1% 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 631 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 76.3% on time across 3,543 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.
The sample behind these figures is 3,544 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. February runs 81.2% on time and July 49.7%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,442 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to BNA questions
How often is DFW to BNA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.9% of the 3,544 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
67.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 10 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.2%, 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 DFW to BNA?
July is the weakest month at 49.7% on time, compared with 81.2% in February. Across the year that is 32 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DFW to BNA79.2%
- American Airlines on DFW to BNA66.2%
- DFW to ORD, a related route68.8%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.8%
- American Airlines on-time record66.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to BNA and BNA to DFW 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.