BNA to DCA flight delays
Nashville, TN (BNA) Washington, VA (DCA) · 562 miles
366 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
67.91%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
3.55%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
80 min
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
27 min
Delay per flight
Averaged over every flight flown
What the record says about this route
Which airline you fly changes the odds here. Republic Airways arrived on time 19.9 points more often than Southwest Airlines over the same period on the same route — same airports, same weather, same air traffic control. A gap that survives all of that is about how the two airlines are run.
Cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth pricing here: 3.55% of scheduled flights never operated. A late flight still gets you there. A cancelled one leaves you rebooking, and on a route with few daily departures that can mean losing a day.
The two directions do not behave alike. DCA to BNA arrives on time 6.3 points more often than the outbound. Delay accumulates through the flying day, so whichever direction is scheduled later tends to carry the worse record — which is an argument for booking the morning departure if the choice exists.
This is a late route. Flights from Nashville to Washington miss their scheduled arrival often enough that a tight connection at the far end is a connection at risk.
Which airline should you fly on this route?
Over March 2025 – August 2026, Republic Airways arrived on time most often on BNA to DCA. Southwest Airlines was late most often.
Every airline on BNA to DCA
Ranked by how many flights each one operated. A carrier with fewer than 100 flights in the period is listed but not graded.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Avg delay | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 142 | 56.12% | 0% | 60 min | F |
| Republic Airways | 134 | 75.97% | 2.99% | 90 min | C |
| PSA Airlines | 39 | 74.29% | 10.26% | 196 min | — |
| Envoy Air | 26 | 78.26% | 11.54% | 44 min | — |
| American Airlines | 25 | 73.91% | 8% | 103 min | — |
The return leg
DCA to BNA Washington back to Nashville 74.21% on time DOther routes from Nashville
Common questions
Are flights from Nashville to Washington usually delayed?
67.91% of flights on the BNA to DCA route arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, so roughly 3 in every ten arrived late. That is worse than the average route in this record.
Which airline is most on time from Nashville to Washington?
Republic Airways, at 75.97% on time across 134 flights. The least punctual on the route was Southwest Airlines at 56.12%.
How often are BNA to DCA flights cancelled?
3.55% of scheduled flights did not operate — about 36 in every thousand. That is high enough that cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth planning around.
When BNA to DCA flights are late, how late are they?
About 80 minutes on average across the flights that arrived more than 15 minutes behind schedule.
What these figures do and do not tell you
Everything on this page is counted from the flights that actually operated on BNA to DCA during March 2025 – August 2026, as reported by the airlines to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "On time" is the federal definition: arriving at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
A route's record is a description of the past, not a forecast. Weather, air traffic control and the aircraft's earlier flights that day drive most delays, and none of them are predictable from a historical rate. What the record does tell you is whether this route runs late more often than others, and which carrier on it has the better history — which is the part you can actually act on when you book.
Cancellations are counted separately from delays because they are a different problem for a traveller: a late flight still gets you there. How the grade is calculated →