Carrier route record
DLSLC→BNA
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Nashville
- Flights
- 933
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 77%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SLC to BNA earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 933 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SLC to BNA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 924 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.8%
Every carrier on SLC to BNA, 1,205 flights
These figures cover 933 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SLC to BNA
Delta flew 933 of the 1,205 flights on SLC to BNA, most of the route. Its 85.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 87.4% to Delta at 85.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlinesthin sample | 272 | 87.4% | 47 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 933 | 85.4% | 52 min | 0.54% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SLC to BNA
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 933 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am348 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm116 flights85.3%
- 2pm–5pm106 flights86.7%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights80.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.1% of the time, against 80.6% for the evening window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SLC to BNA through the year
July is the worst month at 73.2% on time, 20 points below November, the best at 92.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.5%. 4 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 7,025 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,789 of the 7,025 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,025 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,404 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 87.5% on time across 933 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. 933 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 Delta on SLC to BNA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 933 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 85.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 924 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to BNA, every carrier
- Delta on BNA to SLC, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on SLC to BNA87.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.