Route profile
BNA→DTW
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Nashville to Detroit, 456 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 75% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 7,143 flights. How this is calculated
BNA → DTW arrives on time 82.5% of the time; the return trip, DTW → BNA, arrives on time 82.2% of the time.
BNA → DTW spends 24.9 minutes on the ground on a 456-mile trip: 15.7 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at BNA and 9.2 minutes from touchdown to gate at DTW.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why BNA → DTW flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
BNA → DTW cancelled 68 of 7,143 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 105. The reason filed most often was the airline, 55.9% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 188 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 68 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
38 cancellations, 55.9% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
30 cancellations, 44.1% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
68 coded cancellations were recorded on BNA → DTW; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
31 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 7,143 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DTW after arriving from BNA.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 33% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 17% | High risk |
| 60 min | 10% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.3% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.2% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 0.95% of the time and diverts 0.06% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 7,071 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 31 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 7,143 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
BNA → DTW flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 92.8% of the time, against 64.4% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 28.4 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 93.0% on time from 1,144 flights
- 7 AM to 8 AM: too few flights to score
- 9 AM: 85.8% on time from 284 flights
- 10 AM: 88.4% on time from 1,560 flights
- 11 AM: 74.0% on time from 146 flights
- 12 PM: 87.1% on time from 345 flights
- 1 PM: 84.0% on time from 317 flights
- 2 PM: 87.1% on time from 691 flights
- 3 PM: too few flights to score
- 4 PM: 60.3% on time from 235 flights
- 5 PM: 78.0% on time from 997 flights
- 6 PM: 80.0% on time from 397 flights
- 7 PM: 66.2% on time from 442 flights
- 8 PM: 60.9% on time from 298 flights
- 9 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why BNA → DTW runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for BNA → DTW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on BNA → DTW, at 50.3%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 92.8% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 64.4%.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 4,224 | 87.9% | 1.23% | -11 min | 4.9% |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,419 | 73.9% | 0.37% | 1 min | 5.8% |
| Spirit Airlines | 470 | 79.8% | 1.49% | -5 min | 7.8% |
Delta Air Lines flew 59.4% of the 7,113 flights listed. Spirit Airlines cancelled 1.49% of its flights here against 0.37% for Southwest Airlines.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 14.0 percentage points more often than Southwest Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| DL2439 Delta Air Lines | 6:05 AM | 1,127 | 93.0% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 7.1 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 79.4%
- Feb: 88.0%
- Mar: 84.4%
- Apr: 85.3%
- May: 77.7%
- Jun: 76.4%
- Jul: 73.1%
- Aug: 86.7%
- Sep: 90.0%
- Oct: 87.0%
- Nov: 87.1%
- Dec: 79.1%
July is historically the weakest month and September the strongest, a spread of 16.9 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 78.1% from 179 flights
- August 2023: 83.0% from 179 flights
- September 2023: 90.2% from 173 flights
- October 2023: 88.8% from 180 flights
- November 2023: 91.3% from 160 flights
- December 2023: 89.5% from 172 flights
- January 2024: 71.0% from 165 flights
- February 2024: 94.0% from 149 flights
- March 2024: 87.5% from 177 flights
- April 2024: 87.6% from 178 flights
- May 2024: 79.3% from 185 flights
- June 2024: 79.3% from 179 flights
- July 2024: 76.1% from 205 flights
- August 2024: 85.2% from 211 flights
- September 2024: 90.3% from 197 flights
- October 2024: 91.1% from 202 flights
- November 2024: 90.1% from 192 flights
- December 2024: 80.2% from 207 flights
- January 2025: 83.2% from 193 flights
- February 2025: 86.6% from 172 flights
- March 2025: 89.4% from 219 flights
- April 2025: 86.4% from 215 flights
- May 2025: 82.7% from 209 flights
- June 2025: 78.6% from 213 flights
- July 2025: 70.8% from 211 flights
- August 2025: 91.4% from 211 flights
- September 2025: 89.6% from 201 flights
- October 2025: 82.0% from 233 flights
- November 2025: 80.8% from 201 flights
- December 2025: 69.2% from 206 flights
- January 2026: 83.1% from 167 flights
- February 2026: 83.8% from 154 flights
- March 2026: 75.9% from 199 flights
- April 2026: 82.0% from 201 flights
- May 2026: 71.5% from 226 flights
- June 2026: 71.8% from 210 flights
- July 2026: 68.1% from 212 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 78.9% against 84.5% in the 12 months before — declining by 5.6 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 7,143 BNA → DTW flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed