Route reliability record
CLT→IND
Charlotte to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 1,970
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 427 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,970 CLT to IND flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to IND: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.8%, against 75.6% 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
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,934 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
75.0% on time across 1,902 flights
These figures cover 1,970 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 CLT to IND
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 39 | 94.3% | 26 min | 10.26% | A− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 29 | 92.6% | 62 min | 6.90% | A− |
| American Airlines | 1,902 | 75.0% | 69 min | 1.31% | B |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am120 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am309 flights91.4%
- 11am–2pm299 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm304 flights72.2%
- 5pm–8pm360 flights68.6%
- 8pm–5am578 flights67.2%
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 91.4% of the time, against 67.2% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 578 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
August is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 28 points below October, the best at 86.6%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 188 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.6%. 12 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 32,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 32,259 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.57% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 427 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.9% on time across 1,970 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 1,970 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. October runs 86.6% on time and August 58.2%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,934 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to IND questions
How often is CLT to IND delayed?
About 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 24.4% of the 1,970 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to IND compared with the rest of the country?
75.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to IND?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.2%, 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 August delays on CLT to IND?
August is the weakest month at 58.2% on time, compared with 86.6% in October. Across the year that is 28 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 CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.2%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record94.3%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record92.6%
- American Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. CLT to IND and IND to CLT 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.