Carrier route record
AAMIA→BNA
American Airlines · Miami to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,321
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 53%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MIA to BNA draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,321 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on MIA to BNA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 111 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,301 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.4%
Every carrier on MIA to BNA, 2,503 flights
These figures cover 1,321 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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
American against every carrier on MIA to BNA
American flew 1,321 of the 2,503 flights on MIA to BNA, most of the route. Its 66.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 90.3% to American at 66.5%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 344 | 90.3% | 47 min | 1.16% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 66 | 75.0% | 102 min | 3.03% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 37 | 72.2% | 77 min | 2.70% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 735 | 71.2% | 55 min | 0.95% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,321 | 66.5% | 76 min | 1.29% | C |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am196 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm31 flights—
- 2pm–5pm385 flights63.7%
- 5pm–8pm12 flights—
- 8pm–5am697 flights64.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 82.3% of the time, against 63.7% for the afternoon window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 697 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MIA to BNA through the year
July is the worst month at 52.9% on time, 23 points below December, the best at 75.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 135 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.4%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 33,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
45% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 33,264 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 12,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
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. 12.6% 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 806 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.3% on time across 1,321 flights, 11 points above 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,321 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 American on MIA to BNA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. December runs 75.7% on time and July 52.9%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,301 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MIA to BNA, every carrier
- American on BNA to MIA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on MIA to BNA90.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MIA to BNA71.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.