Route reliability record
IND→CLT
Indianapolis to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,970
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 427 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,970 IND to CLT flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly IND to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.4%, against 81.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,936 completed flights
Avg delay
120 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
81.8% on time across 1,899 flights
These figures cover 1,970 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 CLT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 91.9% | 49 min | 11.90% | A− |
| American Airlines | 1,899 | 81.8% | 121 min | 1.37% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 29 | 75.0% | 86 min | 3.45% | B− |
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 19 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–8am394 flights88.6%
- 8am–11am478 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm287 flights88.2%
- 2pm–5pm322 flights77.6%
- 5pm–8pm390 flights69.9%
- 8pm–5am99 flights73.7%
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 88.6% of the time, against 69.9% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 478 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 69.3% on time, against 87.8% in October. 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 188 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.2%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 42,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 43%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 42,004 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 18,000 of the 42,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.62% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 427 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.6% on time across 1,970 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 1,970 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 CLT 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. October runs 87.8% on time and December 69.3%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,936 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to CLT questions
How often is IND to CLT 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 18.1% of the 1,970 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is IND to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
81.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IND to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.9%, 19 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 CLT?
December is the weakest month at 69.3% on time, compared with 87.8% in October. Across the year that is 19 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
- CLT to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- IND to ORD, a related route76.5%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- IND to ATL, a related route88.5%
- PSA Airlines on-time record91.9%
- American Airlines on-time record81.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record75.0%
- 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 CLT and CLT 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.