Carrier route record
WNIND→AUS
Southwest Airlines · Indianapolis to Austin
- Flights
- 807
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on IND to AUS lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 807 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's IND to AUS record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 803 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.8%
Every carrier on IND to AUS, 1,359 flights
These figures cover 807 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Southwest against every carrier on IND to AUS
Southwest flew 807 of the 1,359 flights on IND to AUS, most of the route. Its 83.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.3% to Southwest at 83.2%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 552 | 87.3% | 96 min | 0.18% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 807 | 83.2% | 54 min | 0.25% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am260 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am66 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm110 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm193 flights75.6%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.0% of the time, against 70.9% 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 260 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on IND to AUS through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 76.8%. July is the strongest month at 89.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 13 points. August was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.9%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on IND to AUS runs when it is late
Southwest on IND to AUS often beats the schedule: 242 of 803 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 135 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 45 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 32 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early242 flights30.1%
- Within 15 min426 flights53.1%
- 15–29 min late58 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late45 flights5.6%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights2.2%
- 2+ hours late14 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 803 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 160 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 51 still arrived on time. 26 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on IND to AUS
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 October 2025, 5 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 October 2025 | 5 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 May 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 August 2026 | 4 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 15 March 2026 | 3 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 7,258 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,258 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. The split is drawn from 7,258 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 95.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.25%, below the national 1.89% 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 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.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.3% on time across 807 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 807 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 IND to AUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 807 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 83.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 803 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IND to AUS, every carrier
- Southwest on AUS to IND, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on IND to AUS87.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.