Route reliability record
IND→ORD
Indianapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 5,274
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 177 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 5,274 IND to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 2,778 at 83.2% on time.
Best time to fly IND to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.6% of the time and Saturday flights 81.7%, against 76.7% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 83.2% on time across 2,778 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,086 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
83.2% on time across 2,778 flights
These figures cover 5,274 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 83.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 65.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 660 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 2,778 | 83.2% | 72 min | 2.52% | B |
| Envoy Air | 548 | 77.5% | 102 min | 2.37% | B |
| United Airlines | 724 | 68.3% | 79 min | 2.49% | C |
| American Airlines | 564 | 66.9% | 89 min | 6.03% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 660 | 65.8% | 109 min | 6.82% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.8% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on IND to ORD
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Indianapolis to Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IND → ORDIndianapolis to Chicago | Republic Airways | 81.1% | 83.2% | 2.52% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 3479 06:00 |
| 2. IND → MDWIndianapolis to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 76.4% | 77.5% | 1.48% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 3. IND → ORDIndianapolis to Chicago | Envoy Air | 75.7% | 77.5% | 2.37% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. IND → ORDIndianapolis to Chicago | United Airlines | 66.6% | 68.3% | 2.49% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. IND → ORDIndianapolis to Chicago | American Airlines | 62.9% | 66.9% | 6.03% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 26 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,324 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am909 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm957 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm1,143 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm639 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am302 flights60.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% on time, against 84.6% 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 1,324 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter IND to ORD 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 ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.0%, a wide gap of 25.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.6%
- 8–11am81.5%
- 11am–2pm81.1%
- 2–5pm73.6%
- 5–8pm59.0%
- 8pm–5am60.4%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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. April was the busiest month here, with 587 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.8%, a spread of 9 points.
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 101,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 100,798 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 40,000 minutes out of 101,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.41%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 74.1% on time across 5,279 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 5,274 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 ORD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.41% 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. 5,086 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to ORD questions
How often is IND to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.3% of the 5,274 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 83.2% on time across 2,778 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 65.8%, a gap of 17 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 84.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.0%, 26 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 IND to ORD83.2%
- Envoy Air on IND to ORD77.5%
- United Airlines on IND to ORD68.3%
- American Airlines on IND to ORD66.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on IND to ORD65.8%
- IND to ATL, a related route87.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- IND to LGA, a related route80.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.5%
- United Airlines on-time record68.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.
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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.