Route reliability record
IND→LAX
Indianapolis to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 863
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,814 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 863 IND to LAX flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly IND to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Thursday flights 87.3%, against 84.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 856 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
83.1% on time across 507 flights
These figures cover 863 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IND to LAX
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 | 333 | 86.1% | 76 min | 0.60% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 507 | 83.1% | 108 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 77.8% | 41 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 26 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on IND to LAX
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 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 863 flights.
- 5am–8am211 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am23 flights—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm161 flights80.5%
- 5pm–8pm467 flights84.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 86.7% on time for the 5am–8am window against 80.5% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 467 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter IND to LAX 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 LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 80.5%, a real gap of 6.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.7%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm80.5%
- 5–8pm84.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 70.8% on time, against 91.7% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,813 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,935 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 86.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.3% 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.
At 1,814 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 80.2% on time across 866 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 863 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 LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 863 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 84.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 856 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to LAX questions
How often is IND to LAX 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 16.0% of the 863 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 LAX compared with the rest of the country?
84.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 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 LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 80.5%, 6 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 LAX?
December is the weakest month at 70.8% on time, compared with 91.7% in August. 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
- LAX to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on IND to LAX86.1%
- American Airlines on IND to LAX83.1%
- IND to ORD, a related route76.7%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- IND to ATL, a related route87.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.1%
- American Airlines on-time record83.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record77.8%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
Direction matters. IND to LAX and LAX 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.