Route reliability record
MCO→IND
Orlando to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 2,452
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 829 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,452 MCO to IND flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 399 at 81.5% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to IND: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.2%, against 74.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,413 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Frontier
81.5% on time across 399 flights
These figures cover 2,452 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 MCO to IND
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 81.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,675 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 399 | 81.5% | 101 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 350 | 76.8% | 74 min | 2.57% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,675 | 73.0% | 58 min | 1.31% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 28 | 55.6% | 61 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Frontier leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Indianapolis
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. MCO → INDOrlando to Indianapolis | Frontier Airlines | 81.1% | 81.5% | 0.50% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. MCO → INDOrlando to Indianapolis | Southwest Airlines | 72.0% | 73.0% | 1.31% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 37 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am535 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am441 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm293 flights67.6%
- 2pm–5pm417 flights69.9%
- 5pm–8pm379 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am387 flights56.3%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.3% on time, against 93.4% 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 535 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO to IND 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 MCO to IND, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.3%, a wide gap of 37.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.4%
- 8–11am85.5%
- 11am–2pm67.6%
- 2–5pm69.9%
- 5–8pm64.9%
- 8pm–5am56.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 84.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 274 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.5%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 40,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 40,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 39,650 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 93.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 829 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.4% on time across 2,459 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,452 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 IND 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. September runs 84.1% on time and March 67.9%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,413 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to IND questions
How often is MCO to IND 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 25.3% of the 2,452 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to IND?
Frontier Airlines leads at 81.5% on time across 399 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 73.0%, a gap of 9 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 MCO to IND?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.3%, 37 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 March delays on MCO to IND?
March is the weakest month at 67.9% on time, compared with 84.1% in September. Across the year that is 16 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
- IND to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to IND81.5%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to IND76.8%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to IND73.0%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.1%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record76.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MCO to IND and IND to MCO 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.