Route reliability record
IND→DFW
Indianapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,046
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 761 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,046 IND to DFW flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly IND to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.3%, against 81.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,990 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
81.7% on time across 1,898 flights
These figures cover 2,046 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IND to DFW
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 | 5 | 100.0% | — | 20.00% | A− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 94.1% | 44 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,898 | 81.7% | 103 min | 2.53% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 120 | 71.4% | 67 min | 0.83% | C+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 6 | 66.7% | 25 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on IND to DFW
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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am659 flights87.6%
- 8am–11am139 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm494 flights84.0%
- 2pm–5pm294 flights82.2%
- 5pm–8pm358 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am102 flights57.3%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.3% on time, against 87.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 659 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter IND to DFW 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 DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.3%, a wide gap of 30.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.6%
- 8–11am85.2%
- 11am–2pm84.0%
- 2–5pm82.2%
- 5–8pm69.6%
- 8pm–5am57.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 68.5% on time, against 89.3% 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 208 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.2%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 37,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 36,921 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 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.44% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 761 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 70.3% on time across 2,044 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,046 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 DFW 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 89.3% on time and December 68.5%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,990 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to DFW questions
How often is IND to DFW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.8% of the 2,046 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is IND to DFW compared with the rest of the country?
81.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.3%, 30 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 DFW?
December is the weakest month at 68.5% on time, compared with 89.3% in October. Across the year that is 21 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
- DFW to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- American Airlines on IND to DFW81.7%
- Frontier Airlines on IND to DFW71.4%
- IND to ORD, a related route76.7%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- IND to ATL, a related route87.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record94.1%
- American Airlines on-time record81.7%
- 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 DFW and DFW 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.