Route reliability record
DTW→BNA
Detroit to Nashville
- Flights
- 2,413
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 456 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 2,413 DTW to BNA flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,405 at 79.9% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.9% of the time and Thursday flights 80.8%, against 78.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,375 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.33%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
79.9% on time across 1,405 flights
These figures cover 2,413 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to BNA
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,405 | 79.9% | 57 min | 1.78% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 21 | 76.2% | 64 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 883 | 76.0% | 41 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 72.8% | 75 min | 0.96% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 79.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW to BNA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Detroit to Nashville
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DTW → BNADetroit to Nashville | Delta Air Lines | 78.5% | 79.9% | 1.78% | 11am–2pm, Thu | DL 1557 12:30 |
| 2. DTW → BNADetroit to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 75.5% | 76.0% | 0.68% | 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 29 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am389 flights91.9%
- 8am–11am451 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm481 flights85.8%
- 2pm–5pm501 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm207 flights62.6%
- 8pm–5am384 flights70.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.6% on time, against 91.9% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 501 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW 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 DTW to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 62.6%, a wide gap of 29.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.9%
- 8–11am87.5%
- 11am–2pm85.8%
- 2–5pm64.3%
- 5–8pm62.6%
- 8pm–5am70.2%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
December is the weak month at 59.5% on time, against 90.0% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 232 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.7%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 26,952 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 91.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.33% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 456 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 77.4% on time across 2,410 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,413 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. September runs 90.0% on time and December 59.5%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,375 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to BNA questions
How often is DTW to BNA delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 2,413 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to BNA?
Delta Air Lines leads at 79.9% on time across 1,405 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.0%, a gap of 4 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 DTW to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.6%, 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 December delays on DTW to BNA?
December is the weakest month at 59.5% on time, compared with 90.0% in September. Across the year that is 31 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 DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to BNA79.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to BNA76.0%
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to BNA72.8%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DTW to BNA and BNA to DTW 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.