Route reliability record
MKE→BNA
Milwaukee to Nashville
- Flights
- 976
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 475 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 976 MKE to BNA flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly MKE to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.7%, against 80.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 965 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.7% on time across 976 flights
These figures cover 976 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MKE to BNA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 976 | 80.7% | 49 min | 1.13% | B |
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am359 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am124 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm138 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm252 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm99 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% on time, against 93.2% 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 359 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MKE to BNA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MKE to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 63.3%, a wide gap of 29.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.2%
- 8–11am88.4%
- 11am–2pm83.8%
- 2–5pm64.3%
- 5–8pm63.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 70.9% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 94.8%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.4%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 9,061 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,061 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 9,061 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 475 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.9% on time across 974 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 976 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 976 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 80.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 965 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MKE to BNA questions
How often is MKE to BNA delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.3% of the 976 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is MKE to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
80.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MKE to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.3%, 30 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on MKE to BNA?
June is the weakest month at 70.9% on time, compared with 94.8% in September. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to MKE — the return legseparate record
- Milwaukee Mitchell International (MKE) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- MKE to ORD, a related route68.4%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- MKE to DEN, a related route78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MKE to BNA and BNA to MKE are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.