Route reliability record
IND→ORD
Indianapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 5,186
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 177 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.4%. About one flight in four arrive 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 5,186 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 2,714 at 82.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 82.6% on time across 2,714 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,033 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.82%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Republic
82.6% on time across 2,714 flights
These figures cover 5,186 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 481 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 2,714 | 82.6% | 69 min | 1.77% | B |
| Envoy Air | 593 | 78.2% | 88 min | 1.52% | B |
| United Airlines | 749 | 67.9% | 81 min | 2.54% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 649 | 66.8% | 111 min | 6.01% | C− |
| American Airlines | 481 | 66.8% | 91 min | 6.44% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 6.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 28 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,305 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am853 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm1,098 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm1,062 flights71.6%
- 5pm–8pm724 flights57.2%
- 8pm–5am144 flights61.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.2% on time, against 85.2% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 68.5% on time, against 82.0% 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.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.5%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 98,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure.
37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 36,000 minutes out of 98,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.82%, against 1.80% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 177 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 73.7% on time across 5,190 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 5,186 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.82% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic.
Common questions
IND to ORD questions
How often is IND to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.4% of the 5,186 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on IND to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 82.6% on time across 2,714 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 66.8%, a gap of 16 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IND to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.2%, 28 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 ORD?
December is the weakest month at 68.5% on time, compared with 82.0% in September. Across the year that is 14 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
- ORD to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record82.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record78.2%
- United Airlines on-time record67.9%
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. IND to ORD and ORD to IND are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.