Route reliability record
HOU→BNA
Houston to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,801
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 670 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,801 HOU to BNA flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly HOU to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.3%, against 77.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,788 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.7% on time across 1,801 flights
These figures cover 1,801 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HOU 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 | 1,801 | 77.7% | 48 min | 0.61% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston 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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HOU → BNAHouston to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 77.2% | 77.7% | 0.61% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. IAH → BNAHouston to Nashville | United Airlines | 73.5% | 73.9% | 0.50% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 2174 07:35 |
| 3. IAH → BNAHouston to Nashville | SkyWest Airlines | 68.3% | 69.0% | 1.02% | 5pm–8pm, Wed | OO 4785 18:05 |
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am402 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am230 flights90.7%
- 11am–2pm354 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm330 flights68.3%
- 5pm–8pm317 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am168 flights68.7%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.2% of the time, against 65.1% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 402 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 63.6% on time, 27 points below January, the best at 90.7%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 168 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.5%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 19,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 19,181 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,585 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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 actually costs
5.6% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 670 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 runs 78.0% on time across 1,793 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 1,801 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. January runs 90.7% on time and June 63.6%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,788 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to BNA questions
How often is HOU to BNA delayed?
Roughly 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 22.3% of the 1,801 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
77.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.1%, 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 June delays on HOU to BNA?
June is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 90.7% in January. Across the year that is 27 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 HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- ORD to BNA, a related route68.6%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. HOU to BNA and BNA to HOU 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.