Route reliability record
IND→DTW
Indianapolis to Detroit
- Flights
- 979
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 231 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 2 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 979 IND to DTW flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly IND to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.4% of the time and Thursday flights 86.4%, against 79.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 966 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.33%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.8% on time across 729 flights
These figures cover 979 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IND to DTW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 59 | 83.1% | 102 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 191 | 82.0% | 48 min | 1.05% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 729 | 78.8% | 102 min | 1.51% | B |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 979 flights.
- 5am–8am136 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am175 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm100 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm388 flights78.6%
- 5pm–8pm180 flights80.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.3% on time against 85.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 388 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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.
January is the weak month at 55.6% on time, against 95.1% in September. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 115 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.3%. 15 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. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 18,000 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.
- 60%Carrier
- 26%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 26% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 4.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 18,174 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 11,000 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 231 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 runs 78.4% on time across 981 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 979 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DTW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 979 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 79.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 966 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to DTW questions
How often is IND to DTW 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 20.3% of the 979 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is IND to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
79.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 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 DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 77.3%, 8 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 January delays on IND to DTW?
January is the weakest month at 55.6% on time, compared with 95.1% in September. Across the year that is 39 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
- DTW to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on IND to DTW82.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on IND to DTW78.8%
- IND to ORD, a related route76.5%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- IND to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.8%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. IND to DTW and DTW 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.