Flight profile · Alaska Airlines
AS500
Seattle (SEA) to Indianapolis (IND) · scheduled 10:42 AM – 5:49 PM
How AS500 performs
1,066 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,066 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AS500 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AS500 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
Ask for the position of AS500 right now, if receivers on the ground are hearing it. Nothing is requested until you press the button.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS500 | 73.9% | 1.22% | -2 min | 5.6% | 1,066 |
| Alaska Airlines on SEA → IND | 74.2% | 1.07% | -2 min | 5.0% | 1,686 |
| All SEA → IND flights | 74.2% | 1.07% | -2 min | 5.0% | 1,686 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AS500 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AS500 on SEA → IND. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies AS500 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying AS500 came in 15 or more minutes late on 12% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into SEA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 969 of 1,054 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late |
|---|---|
| AS500 | 12% |
| Network, same turn | 17% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often AS500’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves SEA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches IND?
AS500 pushes back an average of 11.3 minutes late and reaches the gate at IND an average of 4.9 minutes late. The 6.4 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 22.5 minutes on the taxiways at SEA, 1.3 minutes shorter than a typical SEA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at IND, AS500 spends 5.2 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 1.8 minutes shorter than a typical IND arrival (7.0 min).
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached IND. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 30,717 departures from SEA scheduled in the clock hour AS500 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at IND (147,137 flights), not just AS500’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves SEA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AS500 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 30,717 departures from SEA are scheduled in the 10 AM–11 AM hour over the period, against 510,205 across the whole day.
AS500 is scheduled out of SEA at 10:42 AM, in the 10 AM–11 AM bank. Departures from SEA in that hour arrive on time 77.8% of the time against 79.1% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour AS500 leaves in is an ordinary one for SEA and explains nothing about its record either way.
The two airport figures cover every departure from SEA to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does AS500 run worse on particular days?
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Saturday the least, a gap of 11.9 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes AS500 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| IND→SEA Indianapolis to Seattle | July 1, 2023 – July 31, 2026 | 456 | 69.7% |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AS500 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
38 min late
against a median of 2 min early
Percentiles over 1,066 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,066 records of AS500 operating SEA → IND, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed