Route reliability record
MSY→BNA
New Orleans to Nashville
- Flights
- 1,495
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 471 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,495 MSY to BNA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSY to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.8%, against 78.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,484 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.67%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.5% on time across 1,430 flights
These figures cover 1,495 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSY 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 | 1,430 | 78.5% | 49 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 65 | 67.2% | 57 min | 1.54% | C |
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 34 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–8am345 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am255 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm264 flights85.5%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm231 flights58.9%
- 8pm–5am42 flights62.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.9% on time, against 92.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 60.3% on time, 35 points below September, the best at 95.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 163 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.1%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 16,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
61% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 16,226 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 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.67%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 471 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 runs 78.9% on time across 1,498 flights, within about a point 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 1,495 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.0% on time and June 60.3%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,484 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSY to BNA questions
How often is MSY to BNA delayed?
Roughly 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 22.0% of the 1,495 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is MSY to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
78.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSY to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.9%, 34 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 MSY to BNA?
June is the weakest month at 60.3% on time, compared with 95.0% in September. Across the year that is 35 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 MSY — the return legseparate record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- MSY to ATL, a related route83.3%
- ORD to BNA, a related route68.6%
- MSY to IAH, a related route82.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record67.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MSY to BNA and BNA to MSY are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MSY to BNA’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.