Carrier route record
DLMSP→BNA
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,213
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 70%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to BNA lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,213 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSP to BNA record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,191 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.5%
Every carrier on MSP to BNA, 1,723 flights
These figures cover 1,213 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSP to BNA
Delta flew 1,213 of the 1,723 flights on MSP to BNA, most of the route. Its 82.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.6% to SkyWest at 0.0%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,213 | 82.6% | 49 min | 1.48% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 509 | 78.9% | 54 min | 1.18% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 55 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to BNA
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 14 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–8am335 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am20 flights—
- 11am–2pm231 flights88.6%
- 2pm–5pm264 flights77.7%
- 5pm–8pm63 flights85.0%
- 8pm–5am300 flights75.3%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.0% of the time, against 75.3% for the overnight window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 335 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MSP to BNA through the year
December is the weak month at 68.2% on time, against 91.6% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 115 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.8%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 10,000 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%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,391 minutes out of 10,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 10,126 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 4,602 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
The 695 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 86.9% on time across 1,213 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,213 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 Delta on MSP to BNA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.6% on time and December 68.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,191 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to BNA, every carrier
- Delta on BNA to MSP, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MSP to BNA78.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.