Carrier route record
AADFW→BNA
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Nashville
- Flights
- 3,131
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 89%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to BNA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 3,131 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to BNA runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 116 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,026 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.2%
Every carrier on DFW to BNA, 3,529 flights
These figures cover 3,131 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 DFW to BNA
American flew 3,131 of the 3,529 flights on DFW to BNA, most of the route. Its 66.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.6% to PSA at 64.9%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 79 | 81.6% | 88 min | 3.80% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 214 | 80.2% | 55 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 25 | 70.8% | 136 min | 4.00% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 3,131 | 66.0% | 72 min | 3.26% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 64.9% | 81 min | 7.50% | D− |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DFW to BNA
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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am249 flights83.7%
- 8am–11am658 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm471 flights66.2%
- 2pm–5pm629 flights59.6%
- 5pm–8pm549 flights56.9%
- 8pm–5am575 flights55.3%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.3% on time, against 83.7% 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 658 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to BNA through the year
July is the worst month at 45.3% on time, 36 points below February, the best at 80.9%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 292 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.6%. 12 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 49% of the 74,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
49% 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 74,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 74,245 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 83.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.26%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.3% 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 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. 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 75.3% on time across 3,131 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 3,131 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 American on DFW to BNA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.26% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 3,026 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to BNA, every carrier
- American on BNA to DFW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DFW to BNA80.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.