Carrier route record

DLIND→LAX

Delta Air Lines · Indianapolis to Los Angeles

Flights: 336
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 39%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on IND to LAX earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 336 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's IND to LAX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.30%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.8%

Every carrier on IND to LAX, 853 flights

These figures cover 336 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on IND to LAX

Delta flew 336 of the 853 flights on IND to LAX, about 39% of it. Its 86.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.3% to Allegiant at 25.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on IND to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	336	86.3%	74 min	0.30%	A+
American Airlines	466	82.5%	103 min	0.86%	B+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	34	76.5%	72 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	5	60.0%	26 min	0.00%	D+
Allegiant Airthin sample	12	25.0%	91 min	0.00%	F+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on IND to LAX

DL 86117:0585.7% · 302 flights

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

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 336 flights.

5am–8am35 flights91.4%
8am–11am2 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm299 flights85.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 91.4% on time for the 5am–8am window against 85.6% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 299 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on IND to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202583 flights92.8%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights79.5%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights82.6%
Apr–Jun 202688 flights89.8%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 86.3% on time across 336 flights.

Delta on IND to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 92.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 79.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 84 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 3,403 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.

Carrier
44%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
6%

35% 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 3,403 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 3,403 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 1,487 of the 3,403 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.30%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 92.2% on time across 335 flights, 6 points above 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 336 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.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on IND to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 336 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 86.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures