Carrier route record
WNLGA→BNA
Southwest Airlines · New York to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,447
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,447 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 Southwest on LGA to BNA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,399 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.2%
Every carrier on LGA to BNA, 3,805 flights
These figures cover 1,447 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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
Southwest against every carrier on LGA to BNA
Southwest flew 1,447 of the 3,805 flights on LGA to BNA, about 38% of it. Its 69.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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: 5 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 | 1,696 | 74.6% | 62 min | 5.31% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 34 | 73.5% | 125 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 450 | 69.2% | 81 min | 4.44% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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 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 32 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am349 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am206 flights77.4%
- 11am–2pm181 flights61.5%
- 2pm–5pm302 flights60.6%
- 5pm–8pm175 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am234 flights57.0%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.0% on time, against 88.9% 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 349 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LGA to BNA through the year
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 75.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.9%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 28,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 28,145 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 88.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.25%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 10.2% 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 70.7% on time across 1,447 flights, within 2 points 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 1,447 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 3.25% 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. 1,399 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to BNA, every carrier
- Southwest on BNA to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to BNA74.6%
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to BNA69.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on LGA to BNA61.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.