Route reliability record

ORD→IND

Chicago to Indianapolis

Flights: 5,190
Period: June 2025 to May 2026
Distance: 177 mi
Carriers: 5

This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 5,190 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 593 at 79.8% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 79.8% on time across 593 flights.

On time

73.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,016 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.28%

National rate is 1.80%

Best carrier

Envoy

79.8% on time across 593 flights

These figures cover 5,190 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Which airline is most reliable on ORD to IND

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 79.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 481 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to IND
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	593	79.8%	53 min	1.35%	B
Republic Airways	2,716	76.0%	78 min	2.76%	B
SkyWest Airlines	649	70.0%	83 min	6.32%	C−
United Airlines	751	68.8%	70 min	2.26%	C
American Airlines	481	65.3%	72 min	6.03%	C−

SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 16 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am296 flights81.9%
8am–11am832 flights80.8%
11am–2pm969 flights79.2%
2pm–5pm1,165 flights72.4%
5pm–8pm948 flights68.5%
8pm–5am980 flights66.0%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.9% of the time, against 66.0% for the overnight 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.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 17 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 65.8% on time, against 82.4% 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.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.5%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 98,000 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
44%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
14%
Security
0%

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.

44% 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 98,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.

Cancellations run at 3.28%, against 1.80% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 177 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 76.6% on time across 5,186 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 5,190 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.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.28% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic.

Common questions

ORD to IND questions

How often is ORD to IND delayed?

About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.3% of the 5,190 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on ORD to IND?

Envoy Air leads at 79.8% on time across 593 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 65.3%, a gap of 15 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 ORD to IND?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.0%, 16 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 ORD to IND?

December is the weakest month at 65.8% on time, compared with 82.4% in September. Across the year that is 17 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ORD to IND and IND to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures