Carrier route record

OHPHL→BNA

PSA Airlines · Philadelphia to Nashville

Flights: 410
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on PHL to BNA sits in the middle of the pack with a B−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 410 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 910 at 78.1% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate PSA on PHL to BNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

75.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 392 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.39%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.5%

Every carrier on PHL to BNA, 2,816 flights

These figures cover 410 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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

PSA against every carrier on PHL to BNA

PSA flew 410 of the 2,816 flights on PHL to BNA, about 15% of it. Its 75.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 86.3% to Frontier at 68.3%. Three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHL to BNA
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 (this page)	410	75.3%	84 min	4.39%	B−
American Airlines	1,059	71.8%	86 min	2.46%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	144	68.3%	79 min	3.47%	C−

Southwest leads American by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When PSA runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am94 flights88.3%
8am–11am31 flights70.0%
11am–2pm50 flights80.9%
2pm–5pm100 flights68.4%
5pm–8pm86 flights67.1%
8pm–5am49 flights74.5%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.3% of the time, against 67.1% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 100 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on PHL to BNA through the year

Jul–Sep 20253 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025128 flights65.6%
Jan–Mar 2026107 flights81.8%
Apr–Jun 2026172 flights79.4%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. 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 75.3% on time across 410 flights.

PSA on PHL to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 81.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 65.6%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 137 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 68.8%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 8,118 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
Carrier
23%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,118 reported delay minutes.

51% 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 8,118 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.

Cancellations run at 4.39%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 10.7% 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 runs 77.4% on time across 410 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. 410 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 PSA on PHL to BNA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.39% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 392 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures