Route reliability record
FLL→IND
Fort Lauderdale to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 1,047
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,005 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route 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 1,047 FLL to IND flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 372 at 70.7% on time.
Best time to fly FLL to IND: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 75.3%, against 65.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,023 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.10%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Spirit
70.7% on time across 372 flights
These figures cover 1,047 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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 FLL to IND
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 70.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 64.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 420 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 372 | 70.7% | 86 min | 3.49% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 420 | 64.6% | 60 min | 0.95% | D+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 232 | 61.1% | 77 min | 1.29% | D |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 57.1% | 43 min | 8.70% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Lauderdale to Indianapolis
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → INDMiami to Indianapolis | American Airlines | 73.3% | 74.2% | 1.20% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. FLL → INDFort Lauderdale to Indianapolis | Spirit Airlines | 68.2% | 70.7% | 3.49% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. FLL → INDFort Lauderdale to Indianapolis | Southwest Airlines | 64.0% | 64.6% | 0.95% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 42 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am73 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am159 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm115 flights72.1%
- 2pm–5pm296 flights59.5%
- 5pm–8pm200 flights47.4%
- 8pm–5am204 flights65.5%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.4% on time, against 88.9% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 296 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 82.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 142 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.1%. 20 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 43% of the 25,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 25,154 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 88.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
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. 13.2% 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 1,005 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 78.2% on time across 1,044 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,047 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. 1,047 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 65.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,023 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to IND questions
How often is FLL 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 34.2% of the 1,047 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FLL to IND?
Spirit Airlines leads at 70.7% on time across 372 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 64.6%, a gap of 6 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 FLL to IND?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 47.4%, 42 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 March delays on FLL to IND?
March is the weakest month at 51.1% on time, compared with 82.1% in October. Across the year that is 31 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 FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to IND70.7%
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to IND64.6%
- Allegiant Air on FLL to IND61.1%
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.2%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record70.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record64.6%
- Allegiant Air on-time record61.1%
- 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. FLL to IND and IND to FLL 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.