Route reliability record
IND→ATL
Indianapolis to Atlanta
- Flights
- 3,122
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 432 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 3,122 IND to ATL flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly IND to ATL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.6%, against 87.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,080 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.15%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
90.0% on time across 2,666 flights
These figures cover 3,122 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IND to ATL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,666 | 90.0% | 73 min | 1.28% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 311 | 77.8% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 144 | 69.7% | 65 min | 1.39% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on IND to ATL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am713 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am525 flights95.9%
- 11am–2pm813 flights86.3%
- 2pm–5pm550 flights83.3%
- 5pm–8pm445 flights78.4%
- 8pm–5am76 flights84.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 95.9% of the time, against 78.4% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 813 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter IND to ATL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On IND to ATL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 95.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 78.4%, a wide gap of 17.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am93.6%
- 8–11am95.9%
- 11am–2pm86.3%
- 2–5pm83.3%
- 5–8pm78.4%
- 8pm–5am84.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 77.1% on time, against 94.6% in September. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 295 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.1%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 25,308 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 95.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 432 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.8% on time across 3,125 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,122 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 ATL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 94.6% on time and December 77.1%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,080 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to ATL questions
How often is IND to ATL delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.1% of the 3,122 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is IND to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
87.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IND to ATL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 78.4%, 18 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 IND to ATL?
December is the weakest month at 77.1% on time, compared with 94.6% in September. Across the year that is 18 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
- ATL to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on IND to ATL90.0%
- Southwest Airlines on IND to ATL77.8%
- Frontier Airlines on IND to ATL69.7%
- IND to ORD, a related route76.7%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- IND to LGA, a related route80.9%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. IND to ATL and ATL to IND 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.