Carrier route record

WNIND→AUS

Southwest Airlines · Indianapolis to Austin

Flights: 713
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 61%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on IND to AUS lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 713 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on IND to AUS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 709 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.28%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.4%

Every carrier on IND to AUS, 1,177 flights

These figures cover 713 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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

Southwest against every carrier on IND to AUS

Southwest flew 713 of the 1,177 flights on IND to AUS, most of the route. Its 80.4% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.2% to Allegiant at 80.0%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on IND to AUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	454	88.2%	83 min	0.22%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	713	80.4%	52 min	0.28%	B+
Allegiant Airthin sample	10	80.0%	94 min	0.00%	B+

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 28 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–8am222 flights94.6%
8am–11am61 flights90.2%
11am–2pm67 flights75.8%
2pm–5pm151 flights67.1%
5pm–8pm191 flights72.8%
8pm–5am21 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 94.6% of the time, against 67.1% for the afternoon window. That is 28 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 222 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on IND to AUS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, July worst

July is the worst month at 59.0% on time, 29 points below April, the best at 87.9%. 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 88 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.6%. 15 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 60% of the 7,225 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
60%
National Airspace System
21%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
0%

60% 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 7,225 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 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 7,225 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 94.6% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 75.4% on time across 713 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 713 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. 713 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 80.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 709 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures