Carrier route record
F9PHL→BNA
Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to Nashville
- Flights
- 144
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on PHL to BNA sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 144 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 910 at 78.1% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.1% on time across 910 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.5%
Every carrier on PHL to BNA, 2,816 flights
These figures cover 144 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.7% 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
Frontier against every carrier on PHL to BNA
Frontier flew 144 of the 2,816 flights on PHL to BNA, about 5% of it. Its 68.3% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 86.3% to Frontier at 68.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 78.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,059 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 224 | 86.3% | 56 min | 1.79% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 79.1% | 80 min | 2.90% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 910 | 78.1% | 55 min | 1.10% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 410 | 75.3% | 84 min | 4.39% | B− |
| American Airlines | 1,059 | 71.8% | 86 min | 2.46% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 144 | 68.3% | 79 min | 3.47% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.4% 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 Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am18 flights—
- 11am–2pm58 flights75.4%
- 2pm–5pm11 flights—
- 5pm–8pm51 flights58.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.0% on time, against 75.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 58 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHL to BNA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202538 flights73.7%
- Oct–Dec 202546 flights76.1%
- Jan–Mar 202638 flights61.1%
- Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 68.3% on time across 144 flights.
Frontier on PHL to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 61.1%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 48 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, Friday is the strongest day at 68.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.9%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 3,485 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
44% 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 3,485 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 3,485 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 18.7% 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.
The 675 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 64.0% on time across 144 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 144 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 Frontier on PHL to BNA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 139 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to BNA, every carrier
- Frontier on BNA to PHL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PHL to BNA86.3%
- Southwest Airlines on PHL to BNA78.1%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to BNA75.3%
- American Airlines on PHL to BNA71.8%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.