Carrier route record

DLIND→LAX

Delta Air Lines · Indianapolis to Los Angeles

Flights: 333
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 39%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 333 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's IND to LAX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 331 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.60%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

84.0%

Every carrier on IND to LAX, 863 flights

These figures cover 333 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

Delta against every carrier on IND to LAX

Delta flew 333 of the 863 flights on IND to LAX, about 39% of it. Its 86.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.1% to Southwest at 60.0%. Two 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	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

Delta flight numbers on IND to LAX

DL 86117:2585.6% · 300 flights

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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 333 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's IND to LAX record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 86.1% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Delta on IND to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
Oct–Dec 202579 flights79.5%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights82.6%
Apr–Jun 202688 flights89.8%
Jul–Sep 202653 flights92.3%

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 86.1% on time across 333 flights.

Delta on IND to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 92.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 79.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 83 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%, a spread of 16 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on IND to LAX runs when it is late

Delta on IND to LAX often beats the schedule: 128 of 331 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 46 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.

15+ min early128 flights38.7%
Within 15 min157 flights47.4%
15–29 min late21 flights6.3%
30–59 min late14 flights4.2%
1–2 hours late4 flights1.2%
2+ hours late7 flights2.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 331 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

10 of 47 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on IND to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 26 January 2026, 16 hours 7 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Delta on IND to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
26 January 2026	16 hours 7 minutes	Carrier
25 November 2025	5 hours 40 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
29 November 2025	4 hours 16 minutes	National Airspace System
8 December 2025	2 hours 52 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 February 2026	2 hours 22 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 42% of the 3,503 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
6%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,503 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 3,503 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,475 of the 3,503 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 91.8% on time across 333 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. 333 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. 333 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 86.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 331 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures