Route reliability record
IND→LAS
Indianapolis to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 1,332
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,590 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,332 IND to LAS flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly IND to LAS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.5%, against 78.2% 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
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,322 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.5% on time across 1,143 flights
These figures cover 1,332 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 LAS
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 85.7% | 29 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 97 | 82.3% | 85 min | 1.03% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 78 | 81.8% | 86 min | 1.28% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,143 | 77.5% | 50 min | 0.44% | 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 32 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–8am387 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am102 flights87.1%
- 11am–2pm203 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm237 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm205 flights75.1%
- 8pm–5am198 flights59.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.9% on time, against 92.2% 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 387 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 65.3% on time, against 87.9% in August. 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 147 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.3%. 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 42% of the 15,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 15,430 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 92.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, 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 actually costs
5.7% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,590 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.6% on time across 1,333 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,332 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 LAS 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. August runs 87.9% on time and December 65.3%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,322 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to LAS questions
How often is IND to LAS delayed?
Roughly 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 21.8% of the 1,332 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is IND to LAS compared with the rest of the country?
78.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point 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 LAS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.9%, 32 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 LAS?
December is the weakest month at 65.3% on time, compared with 87.9% in August. Across the year that is 23 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
- LAS to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- IND to ORD, a related route76.5%
- LAX to LAS, a related route76.5%
- IND to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record85.7%
- Allegiant Air on-time record82.3%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record81.8%
- 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 LAS and LAS 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.