Route reliability record
IND→AUS
Indianapolis to Austin
- Flights
- 1,177
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 919 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,177 IND to AUS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 454 at 88.2% on time.
Best time to fly IND to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.3%, against 83.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,170 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
88.2% on time across 454 flights
These figures cover 1,177 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IND to AUS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 80.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 713 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 454 | 88.2% | 83 min | 0.22% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 713 | 80.4% | 52 min | 0.28% | B+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 10 | 80.0% | 94 min | 0.00% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on IND to AUS
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Indianapolis to Austin
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IND → AUSIndianapolis to Austin | SkyWest Airlines | 88.0% | 88.2% | 0.22% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4015 07:00 |
| 2. IND → AUSIndianapolis to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 80.2% | 80.4% | 0.28% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 24 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am593 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am62 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm139 flights80.4%
- 2pm–5pm151 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm211 flights73.5%
- 8pm–5am21 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.2% of the time, against 67.1% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 593 flights scheduled in it.
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.
July is the worst month at 74.0% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 92.2%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 162 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.5%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
37% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 11,803 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 4,777 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.25%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
The 919 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 77.1% on time across 1,177 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 1,177 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 AUS 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 92.2% on time and July 74.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,170 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to AUS questions
How often is IND to AUS delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.6% of the 1,177 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on IND to AUS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 88.2% on time across 454 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 80.4%, a gap of 8 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 IND to AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.1%, 24 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 July delays on IND to AUS?
July is the weakest month at 74.0% on time, compared with 92.2% 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
- AUS to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on IND to AUS88.2%
- Southwest Airlines on IND to AUS80.4%
- IND to ORD, a related route76.5%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.1%
- IND to ATL, a related route88.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.4%
- Allegiant Air on-time record80.0%
- 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. IND to AUS and AUS 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.