Route reliability record
DFW→IND
Dallas-Fort Worth to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 2,047
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 761 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,047 DFW to IND flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DFW to IND: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.4% of the time and Monday flights 74.4%, against 68.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,984 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
67.1% on time across 1,886 flights
These figures cover 2,047 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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 DFW 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 | 5 | 100.0% | — | 20.00% | A− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 91.4% | 48 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 11 | 90.9% | 28 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 110 | 84.5% | 79 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,886 | 67.1% | 70 min | 3.02% | C− |
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 36 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–8am373 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am224 flights83.7%
- 11am–2pm275 flights71.5%
- 2pm–5pm414 flights65.6%
- 5pm–8pm495 flights58.9%
- 8pm–5am266 flights50.4%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.4% on time, against 86.4% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 495 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 54.1% on time, 25 points below October, the best at 79.6%. 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 209 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.3%. 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 44,000 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
- 29%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
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 44,000 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 43,521 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.83%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 11.2% 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.
The 761 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 79.2% on time across 2,048 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,047 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.83% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,984 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to IND questions
How often is DFW to IND delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.4% of the 2,047 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DFW to IND compared with the rest of the country?
68.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DFW to IND?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.4%, 36 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 DFW to IND?
July is the weakest month at 54.1% on time, compared with 79.6% in October. Across the year that is 25 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to IND84.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to IND67.1%
- DFW to ORD, a related route67.6%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.2%
- DFW to LGA, a related route67.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record91.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record90.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to IND and IND to DFW 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.