Carrier route record
WNPHX→IND
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 904
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX 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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 904 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on PHX to IND runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 897 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.5%
Every carrier on PHX to IND, 1,530 flights
These figures cover 904 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to IND
Southwest flew 904 of the 1,530 flights on PHX to IND, most of the route. Its 68.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Southwest at 68.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 621 | 80.2% | 76 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 904 | 68.8% | 47 min | 0.66% | C+ |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 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–8am50 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am265 flights81.4%
- 11am–2pm158 flights67.7%
- 2pm–5pm90 flights59.3%
- 5pm–8pm341 flights58.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.4% on time, against 92.0% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 341 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to IND through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 54.2%. February is the strongest month at 81.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. March was the busiest month here, with 99 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 13,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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. The split is drawn from 13,068 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 4,770 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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 costs
7.5% 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 roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,489 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 75.8% on time across 904 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 904 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 Southwest on PHX to IND
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 904 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 68.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 897 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to IND, every carrier
- Southwest on IND to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to IND80.2%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.