Route reliability record
IND→PHX
Indianapolis to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,531
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,489 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,531 IND to PHX flights, of which American Airlines flew 622 at 82.5% on time.
Best time to fly IND to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Friday flights 83.3%, against 78.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,523 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
82.5% on time across 622 flights
These figures cover 1,531 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Which airline is most reliable on IND to PHX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 82.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 904 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 622 | 82.5% | 105 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 904 | 75.8% | 52 min | 0.22% | B+ |
American leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Indianapolis to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IND → PHXIndianapolis to Phoenix | American Airlines | 81.8% | 82.5% | 0.80% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. IND → PHXIndianapolis to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 75.6% | 75.8% | 0.22% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 33 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am595 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am150 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm56 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm131 flights69.5%
- 5pm–8pm438 flights69.3%
- 8pm–5am161 flights57.5%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.5% on time, against 90.2% 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. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 595 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 65.4% on time, against 85.3% in January. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 166 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.6%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 23,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
50% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 22,610 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 90.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.46%, 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 actually costs
6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,489 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.5% on time across 1,530 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,531 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 PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.3% on time and December 65.4%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,523 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IND to PHX questions
How often is IND to PHX delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.4% of the 1,531 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on IND to PHX?
American Airlines leads at 82.5% on time across 622 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.8%, a gap of 7 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 PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.5%, 33 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 PHX?
December is the weakest month at 65.4% on time, compared with 85.3% in January. Across the year that is 20 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
- PHX to IND — the return legseparate record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on IND to PHX82.5%
- Southwest Airlines on IND to PHX75.8%
- IND to ORD, a related route76.5%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- IND to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record82.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. IND to PHX and PHX 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.