Route reliability record
VPS→BNA
Valparaiso to Nashville
- Flights
- 823
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 389 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 823 VPS to BNA flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly VPS to BNA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.5%, against 89.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 119 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 818 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
89.2% on time across 823 flights
These figures cover 823 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 VPS 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 | 823 | 89.2% | 63 min | 0.61% | A+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Valparaiso to Nashville
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. VPS → BNAValparaiso to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 88.7% | 89.2% | 0.61% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. PNS → BNAPensacola to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 77.2% | 77.5% | 0.42% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. ECP → BNAPanama City to Nashville | Southwest Airlines | 76.5% | 76.6% | 0.19% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am338 flights97.9%
- 8am–11am62 flights98.4%
- 11am–2pm167 flights88.6%
- 2pm–5pm139 flights81.3%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights70.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 98.4% of the time, against 70.1% for the evening window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 338 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter VPS 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 VPS to BNA, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 98.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.1%, a wide gap of 28.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am97.9%
- 8–11am98.4%
- 11am–2pm88.6%
- 2–5pm81.3%
- 5–8pm70.1%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
August is the worst month at 79.5% on time, 16 points below November, the best at 95.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.9%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 5,542 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,542 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 5,542 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 98.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
At 389 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.6% on time across 823 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 823 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. 823 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 89.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 818 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
VPS to BNA questions
How often is VPS to BNA delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.8% of the 823 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is VPS to BNA compared with the rest of the country?
89.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on VPS to BNA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 98.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.1%, 28 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 August delays on VPS to BNA?
August is the weakest month at 79.5% on time, compared with 95.0% in November. Across the year that is 16 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 VPS — the return legseparate record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- VPS to ATL, a related route84.1%
- ORD to BNA, a related route69.2%
- VPS to DFW, a related route73.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record89.2%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. VPS to BNA and BNA to VPS 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.