Carrier route record
AADFW→IND
American Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 1,886
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 92%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DFW to IND draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,886 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DFW to IND runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 105 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,824 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.6%
Every carrier on DFW to IND, 2,047 flights
These figures cover 1,886 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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
American against every carrier on DFW to IND
American flew 1,886 of the 2,047 flights on DFW to IND, most of the route. Its 67.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to American at 67.1%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 1,886 | 67.1% | 70 min | 3.02% | C− |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 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–8am328 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am184 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm252 flights70.5%
- 2pm–5pm382 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm474 flights58.3%
- 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 85.1% 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 474 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DFW to IND through the year
July is the worst month at 50.6% on time, 27 points below February, the best at 78.0%. 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 184 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 42,000 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
- 9%Extreme weather
- 9%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 42,000 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 42,013 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 85.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.02%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.7% 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 79.3% on time across 1,887 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,886 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on DFW to IND
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.02% 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. 1,824 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to IND, every carrier
- American on IND to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to IND84.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.