Flight number record

DL 861

Delta Air Lines · Indianapolis to Los Angeles

Route: IND → LAX
Departs: 17:05
Flights: 302
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 302 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 861's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 301 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.33%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 302 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.

Schedule

When DL 861 flies

DL 861 flies IND to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:05, used on 49 of 302 flights, with 17:15 (38 flights) and 17:13 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:0549 flights16.2%
Departs 17:1538 flights12.6%
Departs 17:1331 flights10.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 17:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 861 runs 18 points better at 85.7%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 861 next to IND to LAX

Every carrier on IND to LAX combined arrived on time 82.8% of the time across 853 flights, so DL 861 is 3 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

DL 861 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 861thin sample	302	85.7%	75 min	0.33%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on IND–LAXthin sample	336	86.3%	74 min	0.30%	A+
All carriers on IND–LAX	853	82.8%	90 min	0.59%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 861 quarter by quarter

DL 861 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 92.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.9%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 76 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 202582 flights92.7%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights78.9%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights82.6%
Apr–Jun 202657 flights89.5%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 861 did best on Tuesday at 91.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 75.6%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 861 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 3,212 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.

Carrier
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 1,434 of the 3,212 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,212 delay minutes reported on DL 861.

Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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 routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.0% 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.

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 (81), 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. 302 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: 85.7% on time and 0.33% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures