Route reliability record
MSP→IND
Minneapolis to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 1,243
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 503 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 2 points 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,243 MSP to IND flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to IND: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.5%, against 79.8% 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
79.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,235 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
80.7% on time across 987 flights
These figures cover 1,243 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 MSP to IND
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 987 | 80.7% | 62 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 256 | 76.3% | 62 min | 1.17% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to IND
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.
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 15 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–8am—
- 8am–11am265 flights89.4%
- 11am–2pm338 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm276 flights74.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am364 flights75.6%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 74.2% for the afternoon window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
January is the weak month at 68.0% on time, against 92.5% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.7%. 10 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. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 15,000 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,472 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,921 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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
6.6% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 503 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 83.1% on time across 1,245 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,243 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 92.5% on time and January 68.0%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,235 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to IND questions
How often is MSP to IND 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 20.2% of the 1,243 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to IND compared with the rest of the country?
79.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to IND?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.2%, 15 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 January delays on MSP to IND?
January is the weakest month at 68.0% on time, compared with 92.5% in September. Across the year that is 25 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 MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to IND80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to IND76.3%
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.2%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSP to IND and IND to MSP 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.