Route reliability record
DTW→IND
Detroit to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 981
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 231 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 981 DTW to IND flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to IND: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.8% of the time and Saturday flights 85.7%, against 78.4% 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
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 968 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.1% on time across 729 flights
These figures cover 981 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 DTW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 192 | 83.6% | 64 min | 1.56% | B |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 60 | 78.3% | 60 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 729 | 77.1% | 87 min | 1.23% | B |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 981 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am276 flights76.7%
- 11am–2pm310 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm221 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm55 flights79.6%
- 8pm–5am119 flights74.8%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 82.8% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 74.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 310 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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.
December is the weak month at 56.2% on time, against 95.2% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.9%. 19 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 66% 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 5%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 17,175 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 11,000 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
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. 10.6% 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 231 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 79.7% on time across 979 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 981 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in IND after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 981 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 968 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to IND questions
How often is DTW to IND delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.6% of the 981 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DTW to IND compared with the rest of the country?
78.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to IND?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 82.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 74.8%, 8 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 December delays on DTW to IND?
December is the weakest month at 56.2% on time, compared with 95.2% in October. Across the year that is 39 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 DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on DTW to IND83.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to IND77.1%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.2%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.1%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DTW to IND and IND to DTW 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.