Route reliability record
SAV→BNA
Savannah to Nashville
- Flights
- 922
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 417 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 922 SAV to BNA flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAV to BNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.3%, against 80.0% 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
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 915 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.0% on time across 922 flights
These figures cover 922 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SAV 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 | 922 | 80.0% | 52 min | 0.76% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am203 flights98.0%
- 8am–11am81 flights76.2%
- 11am–2pm267 flights85.3%
- 2pm–5pm49 flights67.3%
- 5pm–8pm171 flights71.0%
- 8pm–5am151 flights62.9%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 98.0% 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 267 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAV 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 SAV to BNA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 98.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.9%, a wide gap of 35.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am98.0%
- 8–11am76.2%
- 11am–2pm85.3%
- 2–5pm67.3%
- 5–8pm71.0%
- 8pm–5am62.9%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 93.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.8%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 9,477 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
64% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,477 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 64 to one. The split is drawn from 9,477 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 98.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.2% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 417 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 74.9% on time across 921 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 922 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 922 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 80.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 915 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAV to BNA questions
How often is SAV 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 20.0% of the 922 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SAV to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
80.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAV to BNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 98.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.9%, 35 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 May delays on SAV to BNA?
May is the weakest month at 64.4% on time, compared with 93.3% in September. Across the year that is 29 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 SAV — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- SAV to ATL, a related route87.1%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- SAV to CLT, a related route86.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- 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. SAV to BNA and BNA to SAV are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SAV 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.