Route reliability record
JAX→BNA
Jacksonville to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,119
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 483 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 1,119 JAX to BNA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly JAX to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.1%, against 80.0% 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
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,110 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.7% on time across 1,101 flights
These figures cover 1,119 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 JAX 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 18 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,101 | 79.7% | 53 min | 0.73% | B+ |
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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 38 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am360 flights96.1%
- 8am–11am48 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm234 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm104 flights57.8%
- 5pm–8pm192 flights77.1%
- 8pm–5am181 flights66.7%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 57.8% for the afternoon window. That is 38 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 360 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JAX 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 JAX to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 57.8%, a wide gap of 38.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.1%
- 8–11am89.6%
- 11am–2pm75.9%
- 2–5pm57.8%
- 5–8pm77.1%
- 8pm–5am66.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.4%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 11,792 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 96.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, 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
5.2% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 483 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.6% on time across 1,103 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,119 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 91.9% on time and March 68.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,110 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JAX to BNA questions
How often is JAX to BNA delayed?
About 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 20.0% of the 1,119 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is JAX to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
80.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on JAX to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 57.8%, 38 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 March delays on JAX to BNA?
March is the weakest month at 68.7% on time, compared with 91.9% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 JAX — the return legseparate record
- Jacksonville International (JAX) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- JAX to ATL, a related route83.8%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- JAX to ORD, a related route76.9%
- Allegiant Air on-time record100.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.7%
- 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. JAX to BNA and BNA to JAX 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.