Carrier route record
AAORD→BNA
American Airlines · Chicago to Nashville
- Flights
- 382
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 9
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to BNA draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 382 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 560 at 76.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.6% on time across 560 flights.
Key figures
On time
63.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 373 completed flights
Avg delay
116 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.6%
Every carrier on ORD to BNA, 5,021 flights
These figures cover 382 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.0% 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 ORD to BNA
American flew 382 of the 5,021 flights on ORD to BNA, about 8% of it. Its 63.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number eight of nine carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to SkyWest at 61.0%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 61.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,467 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airways | 560 | 76.6% | 56 min | 1.43% | B |
| Envoy Air | 783 | 74.8% | 60 min | 3.19% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 81 | 71.8% | 71 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 338 | 70.7% | 60 min | 1.18% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,381 | 70.4% | 74 min | 1.67% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 26 | 69.2% | 32 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 382 | 63.8% | 116 min | 1.83% | D |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,467 | 61.0% | 89 min | 3.89% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.9% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 54 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am53 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am93 flights79.3%
- 11am–2pm118 flights61.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm17 flights—
- 8pm–5am101 flights36.5%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 36.5% on time, against 90.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 118 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to BNA through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025225 flights60.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights69.6%
- Jan–Mar 202621 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202644 flights83.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 63.8% on time across 382 flights.
American on ORD to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 60.3%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 127 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 77.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 51.9%. 26 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 67% 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.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
67% 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 67 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 15,694 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 90.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.83% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.52%.
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. 18.0% 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.
At 409 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 65.5% on time across 384 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 382 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on ORD to BNA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 382 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 63.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 373 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to BNA, every carrier
- American on BNA to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to BNA76.6%
- Envoy Air on ORD to BNA74.8%
- Southwest Airlines on ORD to BNA70.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to BNA70.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to BNA61.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.