Carrier route record

DLLGA→BNA

Delta Air Lines · New York to Nashville

Flights: 450
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on LGA to BNA sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 450 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,696 at 74.6% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Delta on LGA to BNA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 428 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.44%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.2%

Every carrier on LGA to BNA, 3,805 flights

These figures cover 450 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% 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

Delta against every carrier on LGA to BNA

Delta flew 450 of the 3,805 flights on LGA to BNA, about 12% of it. Its 69.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 74.6% to SkyWest at 61.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LGA to BNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	1,696	74.6%	62 min	5.31%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	34	73.5%	125 min	0.00%	C+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	450	69.2%	81 min	4.44%	C−
Southwest Airlines	1,447	69.0%	65 min	3.25%	C−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	178	61.3%	95 min	5.62%	D−

Republic Airways cancels 5.3% 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.

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 30 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am84 flights90.2%
8am–11am5 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm110 flights71.0%
5pm–8pm251 flights60.3%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.3% on time, against 90.2% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 251 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on LGA to BNA through the year

Jul–Sep 202596 flights71.7%
Oct–Dec 2025202 flights64.6%
Jan–Mar 202674 flights78.8%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights69.2%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 69.2% on time across 450 flights.

Delta on LGA to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 64.6%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 113 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.4%. 16 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 49% of the 11,000 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.

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 5,217 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,666 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 4.44%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.9% 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 764 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 68.7% on time across 450 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. 450 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 LGA to BNA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.44% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 428 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures