Carrier route record
WNFLL→IND
Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 420
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on FLL to IND draws a D+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 420 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on FLL to IND runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 130 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 415 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.8%
Every carrier on FLL to IND, 1,047 flights
These figures cover 420 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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
Southwest against every carrier on FLL to IND
Southwest flew 420 of the 1,047 flights on FLL to IND, about 40% of it. Its 64.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 65.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 70.7% to Frontier at 57.1%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 372 | 70.7% | 86 min | 3.49% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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− |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 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–8am30 flights—
- 8am–11am38 flights81.6%
- 11am–2pm61 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm185 flights62.2%
- 5pm–8pm56 flights42.9%
- 8pm–5am50 flights57.4%
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.9% on time, against 81.6% for the 8am–11am 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 185 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on FLL to IND through the year
February is the weak month at 56.2% on time, against 76.5% in July. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 59 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 48.2%. 31 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 8,843 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 8,843 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 8,843 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 81.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
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. 10.4% 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 82.4% on time across 417 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 420 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on FLL to IND
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 420 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 64.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 415 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to IND, every carrier
- Southwest on IND to FLL, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to IND70.7%
- Allegiant Air on FLL to IND61.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.