Carrier route record
DLLGA→BNA
Delta Air Lines · New York to Nashville
- Flights
- 450
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 450 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,657 at 74.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on LGA to BNA runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 70 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 428 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.22%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on LGA to BNA, 3,785 flights
These figures cover 450 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LGA to BNA
Delta flew 450 of the 3,785 flights on LGA to BNA, about 12% of it. Its 70.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 74.4% to SkyWest at 57.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 74.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 66.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,455 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,657 | 74.4% | 63 min | 5.91% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 450 | 70.3% | 84 min | 4.22% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 113 | 69.4% | 186 min | 4.42% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,455 | 66.9% | 61 min | 4.54% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 110 | 57.0% | 97 min | 2.73% | D |
Republic Airways cancels 5.9% 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.
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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 29 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am84 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm163 flights70.1%
- 5pm–8pm198 flights60.9%
- 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: 60.9% 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 198 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to BNA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202543 flights88.1%
- Oct–Dec 2025202 flights64.6%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights78.8%
- Apr–Jun 202678 flights69.2%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights68.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.3% on time across 450 flights.
Delta on LGA to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 88.1% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 64.6%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 90 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, Friday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LGA to BNA runs when it is late
Delta on LGA to BNA often beats the schedule: 123 of 428 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Delta on LGA to BNA is late it tends to be very late: 64 of its 127 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 25 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early123 flights28.7%
- Within 15 min178 flights41.6%
- 15–29 min late27 flights6.3%
- 30–59 min late36 flights8.4%
- 1–2 hours late39 flights9.1%
- 2+ hours late25 flights5.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 428 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 112 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 12 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 27 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at BNA.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LGA to BNA
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 15 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 15 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 August 2026 | 7 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 August 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 March 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 September 2025 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,888 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,666 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 90.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.22%, against 1.89% 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 costs
15.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.9% on time across 450 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
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 4.22% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to BNA, every carrier
- Delta on BNA to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to BNA74.4%
- American Airlines on LGA to BNA69.4%
- Southwest Airlines on LGA to BNA66.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on LGA to BNA57.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.