Carrier route record
AAPHL→IND
American Airlines · Philadelphia to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 534
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHL to IND sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 534 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 571 at 80.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on PHL to IND runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 67 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 520 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.62%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.3%
Every carrier on PHL to IND, 1,594 flights
These figures cover 534 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on PHL to IND
American flew 534 of the 1,594 flights on PHL to IND, about 34% of it. Its 70.6% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.6% to American at 70.6%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| 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 (this page) | 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am96 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm147 flights72.4%
- 2pm–5pm177 flights64.9%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am113 flights67.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 82.1% of the time, against 64.9% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 177 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHL to IND through the year
July is the worst month at 54.0% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 80.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.2%, a spread of 29 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on PHL to IND runs when it is late
American on PHL to IND often beats the schedule: 140 of 520 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 153 late arrivals split 51 under half an hour, 42 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 60 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early140 flights26.9%
- Within 15 min227 flights43.7%
- 15–29 min late51 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late42 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late30 flights5.8%
- 2+ hours late30 flights5.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 520 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
28 of 163 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 18 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on PHL to IND
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 June 2026, 10 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 June 2026 | 10 hours 15 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 December 2025 | 5 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 July 2026 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 20 August 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,349 reported delay minutes.
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.62%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 costs
11.5% 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 76.4% on time across 535 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 534 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 American on PHL to IND
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 534 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 70.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 520 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to IND, every carrier
- American on IND to PHL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PHL to IND80.6%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to IND77.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.