Carrier route record

NKDTW→BNA

Spirit Airlines · Detroit to Nashville

Flights: 146
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.

Spirit on DTW to BNA lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 146 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,403 at 79.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Spirit on DTW to BNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 145 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.68%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.7%

Every carrier on DTW to BNA, 2,417 flights

These figures cover 146 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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

Spirit against every carrier on DTW to BNA

Spirit flew 146 of the 2,417 flights on DTW to BNA, about 6% of it. Its 77.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.5% to SkyWest at 72.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to BNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,403	79.5%	61 min	1.85%	B
Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample	146	77.9%	73 min	0.68%	B+
Southwest Airlines	846	77.7%	39 min	0.71%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	22	72.7%	56 min	0.00%	C+

No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 79.5%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Spirit runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am24 flights—
8am–11am79 flights88.6%
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm40 flights59.0%
5pm–8pm2 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.6% of the time, against 59.0% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 79 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Spirit on DTW to BNA through the year

Jul–Sep 202559 flights91.5%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights69.6%
Jan–Mar 20267 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. 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 77.9% on time across 146 flights.

Split by quarter, Spirit on DTW to BNA logged 59 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 80 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 77.9% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Spirit runs late on this route

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 2,331 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
24%
Extreme weather
3%

36% 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 2,331 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 2,331 reported delay minutes.

38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 885 minutes out of 2,331, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 148 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 146 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 Spirit on DTW to BNA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 146 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 145 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures