Route reliability record
PHL→IND
Philadelphia to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 1,594
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 588 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,594 PHL to IND flights, of which Republic Airways flew 571 at 80.6% on time.
Best time to fly PHL to IND: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.3%, against 76.3% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.6% on time across 571 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,526 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
80.6% on time across 571 flights
These figures cover 1,594 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 PHL to IND
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 534 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 571 | 80.6% | 87 min | 3.33% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 489 | 77.5% | 76 min | 7.16% | B− |
| American Airlines | 534 | 70.6% | 74 min | 2.62% | C |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.2% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on PHL 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Philadelphia 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. PHL → INDPhiladelphia to Indianapolis | Republic Airways | 77.9% | 80.6% | 3.33% | 8am–11am, Tue | YX 4637 18:40 |
| 2. PHL → INDPhiladelphia to Indianapolis | PSA Airlines | 72.0% | 77.5% | 7.16% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. PHL → INDPhiladelphia to Indianapolis | American Airlines | 68.8% | 70.6% | 2.62% | 8am–11am, 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 16 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am494 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm297 flights74.6%
- 2pm–5pm324 flights68.9%
- 5pm–8pm362 flights75.9%
- 8pm–5am117 flights68.5%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.3% of the time, against 68.5% 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. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 494 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PHL 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 PHL to IND, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 84.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 68.5%, a wide gap of 15.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.3%
- 11am–2pm74.6%
- 2–5pm68.9%
- 5–8pm75.9%
- 8pm–5am68.5%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
December is the weak month at 61.2% on time, against 86.2% in February. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.5%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,447 reported delay minutes.
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.27%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 588 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 80.9% on time across 1,596 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 1,594 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 delay figures matter less here than the 4.27% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,526 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHL to IND questions
How often is PHL 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 23.7% of the 1,594 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PHL to IND?
Republic Airways leads at 80.6% on time across 571 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 70.6%, a gap of 10 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 PHL to IND?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.5%, 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 PHL to IND?
December is the weakest month at 61.2% on time, compared with 86.2% in February. 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 PHL — the return legseparate record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on PHL to IND80.6%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to IND77.5%
- American Airlines on PHL to IND70.6%
- PHL to ATL, a related route78.0%
- ORD to IND, a related route74.1%
- PHL to MCO, a related route72.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record77.5%
- American Airlines on-time record70.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PHL to IND and IND to PHL 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.