Route reliability record
JFK→BNA
New York to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,466
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 765 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,466 JFK to BNA flights, of which Republic Airways flew 927 at 74.8% on time.
Best time to fly JFK to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.2%, against 73.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,397 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
74.8% on time across 927 flights
These figures cover 1,466 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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
Which airline is most reliable on JFK 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 927 | 74.8% | 64 min | 4.10% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 539 | 71.3% | 58 min | 4.64% | C− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 4.6% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on JFK 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York 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. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EWR → BNANewark to Nashville | Republic Airways | 74.2% | 78.4% | 5.30% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. EWR → BNANewark to Nashville | United Airlines | 73.4% | 75.1% | 2.30% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1428 07:30 |
| 3. JFK → BNANew York to Nashville | Republic Airways | 71.7% | 74.8% | 4.10% | 5am–8am, Mon | YX 4710 15:59 |
| 4. LGA → BNANew York to Nashville | Republic Airways | 70.6% | 74.6% | 5.31% | 8am–11am, Sat | YX 4735 08:40 |
| 5. JFK → BNANew York to Nashville | JetBlue Airways | 68.0% | 71.3% | 4.64% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 1173 13:30 |
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 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am115 flights87.6%
- 8am–11am264 flights79.1%
- 11am–2pm376 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm423 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights64.5%
- 8pm–5am253 flights64.1%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.1% on time, against 87.6% 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 423 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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.
July is the worst month at 42.9% on time, 42 points below May, the best at 85.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 157 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.3%. 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 43% of the 23,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 22,822 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 7,696 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.30%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 765 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.0% on time across 1,470 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,466 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 delay figures matter less here than the 4.30% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,397 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to BNA questions
How often is JFK 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 26.5% of the 1,466 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on JFK to BNA?
Republic Airways leads at 74.8% on time across 927 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 71.3%, 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 JFK to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.1%, 24 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 July delays on JFK to BNA?
July is the weakest month at 42.9% on time, compared with 85.1% in May. Across the year that is 42 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 JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on JFK to BNA74.8%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to BNA71.3%
- JFK to LAX, a related route77.6%
- ORD to BNA, a related route68.6%
- JFK to SFO, a related route74.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record74.8%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record71.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JFK to BNA and BNA to JFK 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.