Route reliability record
ECP→BNA
Panama City to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,071
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 401 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,071 ECP to BNA flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly ECP to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Saturday flights 82.5%, against 76.6% 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
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,068 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.6% on time across 1,071 flights
These figures cover 1,071 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ECP 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,071 | 76.6% | 51 min | 0.19% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Panama City 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. VPS → BNAValparaiso to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 88.7% | 89.2% | 0.61% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. ECP → BNAPanama City to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 76.5% | 76.6% | 0.19% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am281 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am153 flights91.5%
- 11am–2pm203 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm197 flights69.4%
- 5pm–8pm233 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.6% on time, against 92.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 281 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ECP 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 ECP to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.6%, a wide gap of 33.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.5%
- 8–11am91.5%
- 11am–2pm71.4%
- 2–5pm69.4%
- 5–8pm58.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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.
June is the worst month at 63.3% on time, 35 points below September, the best at 97.8%. 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 106 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.4%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 12,730 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 92.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.19%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
6.5% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 401 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 74.3% on time across 1,082 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,071 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,071 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 76.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,068 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ECP to BNA questions
How often is ECP to BNA delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.4% of the 1,071 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is ECP to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
76.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ECP to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.6%, 34 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 June delays on ECP to BNA?
June is the weakest month at 63.3% on time, compared with 97.8% in September. Across the year that is 35 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 ECP — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- ECP to ATL, a related route85.8%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- ECP to DFW, a related route77.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.6%
- 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. ECP to BNA and BNA to ECP 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.