Carrier route record
DLLAX→BNA
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Nashville
- Flights
- 909
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAX to BNA earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 909 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 928 at 79.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to BNA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 894 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on LAX to BNA, 2,320 flights
These figures cover 909 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LAX to BNA
Delta flew 909 of the 2,320 flights on LAX to BNA, about 39% of it. Its 85.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 88.2% to American at 75.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 88.2% | 68 min | 1.45% | A |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 909 | 85.8% | 62 min | 1.54% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 928 | 79.8% | 39 min | 0.75% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 414 | 75.6% | 113 min | 0.72% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 79.8%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LAX to BNA
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am293 flights94.8%
- 8am–11am60 flights79.3%
- 11am–2pm192 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm103 flights89.0%
- 5pm–8pm261 flights82.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.0% on time against 94.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 293 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAX to BNA through the year
February is the weak month at 76.0% on time, against 94.4% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.6%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 65% of the 7,841 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.
- 65%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 5,127 of the 7,841 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,841 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.54% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 1,798 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 85.5% on time across 909 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 909 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 Delta on LAX to BNA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 909 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 894 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to BNA, every carrier
- Delta on BNA to LAX, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to BNA79.8%
- American Airlines on LAX to BNA75.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.