Flight number record
DL 861
Delta Air Lines · Indianapolis to Los Angeles
- Route
- IND → LAX
- Departs
- 17:25
- Flights
- 300
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 861, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 861 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 300 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 861's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 298 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.67%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 300 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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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Schedule
When DL 861 flies
DL 861 flies IND to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:25, used on 74 of 300 flights, with 17:05 (49 flights) and 17:15 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 17:2574 flights24.7%
- Departs 17:0549 flights16.3%
- Departs 17:1538 flights12.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 17:25 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 861 runs 18 points better at 85.6%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 861 next to IND to LAX
Every carrier on IND to LAX combined arrived on time 84.0% of the time across 863 flights, so DL 861 is 2 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 861thin sample | 300 | 85.6% | 77 min | 0.67% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on IND–LAXthin sample | 333 | 86.1% | 76 min | 0.60% | A+ |
| All carriers on IND–LAX | 863 | 84.0% | 94 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 861 quarter by quarter
DL 861 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 92.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 75 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights78.9%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights82.6%
- Apr–Jun 202657 flights89.5%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights92.3%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 861 did best on Thursday at 90.9% on time and worst on Sunday at 73.9%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 861 runs when it is late
DL 861 often beats the schedule: 112 of 298 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early112 flights37.6%
- Within 15 min143 flights48.0%
- 15–29 min late21 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late12 flights4.0%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights1.0%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 298 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 44 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 861
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 January 2026, 16 hours 7 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 January 2026 | 16 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 November 2025 | 5 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 November 2025 | 4 hours 16 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 December 2025 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 February 2026 | 2 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 861 runs late
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 3,312 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,312 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 3,312 delay minutes reported on DL 861.
Cancellations are rare at 0.67%, 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% 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 1,814 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including LAX to IND (134), but none flew often enough under DL 861 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IND to LAX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 300 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 DL 861
For a booking, DL 861 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.6% on time and 0.67% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IND to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to IND, the return direction
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
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.