Carrier route record
DLMSP→IND
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 990
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MSP to IND lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 990 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSP to IND record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 984 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.1%
Every carrier on MSP to IND, 1,250 flights
These figures cover 990 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on MSP to IND
Delta flew 990 of the 1,250 flights on MSP to IND, most of the route. Its 82.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.3% to SkyWest at 76.7%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 990 | 82.3% | 54 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 260 | 76.7% | 62 min | 1.15% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on MSP to IND
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am197 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm235 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm194 flights84.5%
- 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 88.1% of the time, against 75.6% for the overnight window. That is 13 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
Delta on MSP to IND through the year
December is the weak month at 68.7% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 117 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.3%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on MSP to IND runs when it is late
Delta on MSP to IND often beats the schedule: 303 of 984 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 174 late arrivals split 71 under half an hour, 58 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early303 flights30.8%
- Within 15 min507 flights51.5%
- 15–29 min late71 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late58 flights5.9%
- 1–2 hours late31 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late14 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 984 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 151 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 47 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on MSP to IND
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 December 2025, 10 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 December 2025 | 10 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 5 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 June 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 June 2026 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 December 2025 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 9,387 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,419 of the 9,387 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,387 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.8% on time across 992 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 990 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 Delta on MSP to IND
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 990 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 82.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 984 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to IND, every carrier
- Delta on IND to MSP, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MSP to IND76.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.