Route reliability record
AUS→IND
Austin to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 1,177
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 919 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,177 AUS to IND flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 454 at 79.4% on time.
Best time to fly AUS to IND: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.0% of the time and Saturday flights 87.6%, against 77.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,169 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.4% on time across 454 flights
These figures cover 1,177 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to IND
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 10 | 88.9% | 177 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 454 | 79.4% | 82 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 713 | 75.4% | 53 min | 0.56% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 79.4%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on AUS to IND
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin to Indianapolis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AUS → INDAustin to Indianapolis | SkyWest Airlines | 79.1% | 79.4% | 0.44% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 3731 19:23 |
| 2. AUS → INDAustin to Indianapolis | Southwest Airlines | 75.0% | 75.4% | 0.56% | 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 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am150 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am190 flights92.0%
- 11am–2pm85 flights81.0%
- 2pm–5pm168 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm361 flights71.3%
- 8pm–5am223 flights67.9%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.0% of the time, against 67.9% for the overnight window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
July is the worst month at 70.1% on time, 20 points below January, the best at 90.3%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 162 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 17,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 16,959 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 7,460 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, 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 stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 919 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.4% on time across 1,177 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,177 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in IND after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 90.3% on time and July 70.1%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,169 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to IND questions
How often is AUS to IND delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.9% of the 1,177 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to IND?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 79.4% on time across 454 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.4%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AUS to IND?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.9%, 24 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 July delays on AUS to IND?
July is the weakest month at 70.1% on time, compared with 90.3% in January. Across the year that is 20 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
- IND to AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on AUS to IND79.4%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to IND75.4%
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.4%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.2%
- AUS to DFW, a related route73.8%
- Allegiant Air on-time record88.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. AUS to IND and IND to AUS 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.