Carrier route record

WNLGA→BNA

Southwest Airlines · New York to Nashville

Flights: 1,455
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 38%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on LGA to BNA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,455 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 Southwest on LGA to BNA runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 104 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,388 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.54%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.3%

Every carrier on LGA to BNA, 3,785 flights

These figures cover 1,455 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on LGA to BNA

Southwest flew 1,455 of the 3,785 flights on LGA to BNA, about 38% of it. Its 66.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LGA to BNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	1,657	74.4%	63 min	5.91%	C−
Delta Air Lines	450	70.3%	84 min	4.22%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	113	69.4%	186 min	4.42%	C−
Southwest Airlines (this page)	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 Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 33 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am352 flights87.2%
8am–11am179 flights74.3%
11am–2pm218 flights61.2%
2pm–5pm281 flights56.4%
5pm–8pm183 flights54.5%
8pm–5am242 flights57.2%

Scale runs 45% to 95%.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 87.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 352 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on LGA to BNA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, October worst

Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 53.7%. January is the strongest month at 88.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 35 points. May was the busiest month here, with 134 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.8%, a spread of 12 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on LGA to BNA runs when it is late

The 460 late arrivals split 164 under half an hour, 156 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 140 an hour or more.

15+ min early292 flights21.0%
Within 15 min636 flights45.8%
15–29 min late164 flights11.8%
30–59 min late156 flights11.2%
1–2 hours late92 flights6.6%
2+ hours late48 flights3.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,388 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 557 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 175 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 78 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 Southwest on LGA to BNA

The latest arrival of the period was on 6 July 2026, 10 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across July, September and October, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on LGA to BNA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
6 July 2026	10 hours 31 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 July 2026	7 hours 3 minutes	National Airspace System
18 September 2025	7 hours	Carrier
8 October 2025	6 hours 47 minutes	National Airspace System
6 September 2025	6 hours 11 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
National Airspace System
24%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 28,096 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 87.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.54%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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

10.1% 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 runs 68.2% on time across 1,455 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 1,455 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on LGA to BNA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.54% 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. 1,388 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures