Carrier route record
DLMSP→BNA
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,220
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 69%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to BNA lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,220 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSP to BNA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,194 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.0%
Every carrier on MSP to BNA, 1,777 flights
These figures cover 1,220 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSP to BNA
Delta flew 1,220 of the 1,777 flights on MSP to BNA, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.9% 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) | 1,220 | 82.9% | 48 min | 1.80% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 556 | 77.0% | 50 min | 1.08% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 55 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to BNA
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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.
- 5am–8am335 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am20 flights—
- 11am–2pm232 flights90.4%
- 2pm–5pm270 flights77.0%
- 5pm–8pm63 flights85.0%
- 8pm–5am300 flights76.0%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.4% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 76.0%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.9%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSP to BNA runs when it is late
Delta on MSP to BNA often beats the schedule: 337 of 1,194 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 204 late arrivals split 94 under half an hour, 57 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 53 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early337 flights28.2%
- Within 15 min653 flights54.7%
- 15–29 min late94 flights7.9%
- 30–59 min late57 flights4.8%
- 1–2 hours late41 flights3.4%
- 2+ hours late12 flights1.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,194 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 160 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 79 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 Delta on MSP to BNA
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 June 2026, 4 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 June 2026 | 4 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 January 2026 | 3 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 March 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 January 2026 | 2 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 9,760 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
34% 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 3,325 minutes out of 9,760, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,760 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,583 of the 9,760 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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.
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.
The return leg runs 85.6% on time across 1,220 flights, within 3 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 1,220 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. 1,194 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 BNA77.0%
- 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 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.