Carrier route record

AAIND→PHX

American Airlines · Indianapolis to Phoenix

Flights: 622
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 41%
Carriers: 3

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

American on IND to PHX lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 622 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's IND to PHX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 616 completed flights

Avg delay

105 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.80%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.6%

Every carrier on IND to PHX, 1,531 flights

These figures cover 622 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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

American against every carrier on IND to PHX

American flew 622 of the 1,531 flights on IND to PHX, about 41% of it. Its 82.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Southwest at 75.8%. One 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 PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	5	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
American Airlines (this page)	622	82.5%	105 min	0.80%	B+
Southwest Airlines	904	75.8%	52 min	0.22%	B+

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am288 flights89.4%
8am–11am80 flights87.5%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm14 flights—
5pm–8pm236 flights73.6%
8pm–5am4 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 73.6% for the evening window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 288 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on IND to PHX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, July worst

July is the worst month at 73.3% on time, 15 points below May, the best at 88.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.8%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 11,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
49%
Carrier
31%
Extreme weather
10%
National Airspace System
10%

49% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 11,343 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 89.4% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, 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

7.0% 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 close to two hours, 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 runs 80.2% on time across 621 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 622 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 American on IND to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 622 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 616 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