Route reliability record
RDU→BNA
Raleigh to Nashville
- Flights
- 2,224
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 442 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 2,224 RDU to BNA flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 1,266 at 80.4% on time.
Best time to fly RDU to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.3%, against 79.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,190 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.4% on time across 1,266 flights
These figures cover 2,224 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Which airline is most reliable on RDU to BNA
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,266 | 80.4% | 48 min | 1.03% | B |
| Republic Airways | 958 | 79.2% | 72 min | 1.88% | B |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 80.4%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RDU to BNA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Raleigh to Nashville
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RDU → BNARaleigh to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 79.6% | 80.4% | 1.03% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. RDU → BNARaleigh to Nashville | Republic Airways | 77.7% | 79.2% | 1.88% | 8am–11am, Wed | YX 4762 09:10 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 29 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights96.4%
- 8am–11am510 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm252 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm488 flights67.4%
- 5pm–8pm247 flights72.8%
- 8pm–5am362 flights67.0%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.4% of the time, against 67.0% for the overnight window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 510 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RDU to BNA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On RDU to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 67.0%, a wide gap of 29.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.4%
- 8–11am90.3%
- 11am–2pm84.3%
- 2–5pm67.4%
- 5–8pm72.8%
- 8pm–5am67.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
December is the weak month at 71.5% on time, against 88.5% in February. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.8%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 to one. The split is drawn from 25,871 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 96.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 442 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.8% on time across 2,223 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,224 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. February runs 88.5% on time and December 71.5%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,190 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDU to BNA questions
How often is RDU to BNA delayed?
About 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 20.1% of the 2,224 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RDU to BNA?
Southwest Airlines leads at 80.4% on time across 1,266 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 79.2%, a gap of about a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RDU to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.0%, 29 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 December delays on RDU to BNA?
December is the weakest month at 71.5% on time, compared with 88.5% in February. Across the year that is 17 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 RDU — the return legseparate record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to BNA80.4%
- Republic Airways on RDU to BNA79.2%
- RDU to ATL, a related route86.5%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- RDU to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record79.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. RDU to BNA and BNA to RDU are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.