Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL861
Indianapolis (IND) to Los Angeles (LAX) · scheduled 7:05 AM – 8:55 AM
How DL861 performs
765 operations, September 2023 – July 2026.
DL861 arrived on time 85.9% of the time, against 82.7% for all IND → LAX flights, so this departure is 3.2 percentage points better than the route as a whole.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 765 operations, September 2023 – July 2026 · If DL861 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL861 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 DL861 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL861 | 85.9% | 0.65% | -11 min | 4.0% | 765 |
| Delta Air Lines on IND → LAX | 86.0% | 0.58% | -11 min | 4.0% | 867 |
| All IND → LAX flights | 82.7% | 0.58% | -10 min | 6.0% | 2,237 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · September 2023 – July 2026
Why DL861 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 DL861 on IND → LAX. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering September 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies DL861 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying DL861 came in 15 or more minutes late on 13% 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 IND just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 739 of 760 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 |
|---|---|
| DL861 | 13% |
| 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 DL861’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 September 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves IND late, does that still matter by the time it reaches LAX?
DL861 pushes back an average of 9.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at LAX an average of 1.1 minutes early. The 10.2 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 15.4 minutes on the taxiways at IND, 1.3 minutes shorter than a typical IND departure in the same hour.
On arrival at LAX, DL861 spends 11.1 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 about what any arrival at LAX spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
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 LAX. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 15,537 departures from IND scheduled in the clock hour DL861 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at LAX (595,170 flights), not just DL861’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · September 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves IND
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL861 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 15,537 departures from IND are scheduled in the 7 AM–8 AM hour over the period, against 147,128 across the whole day.
DL861 is scheduled out of IND at 7:05 AM, in the 7 AM–8 AM bank. Departures from IND in that hour arrive on time 88.3% of the time against 81.9% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 6.4 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from IND 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 · September 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes DL861 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| LAX→IND Los Angeles to Indianapolis | February 12, 2026 – July 31, 2026 | 108 | 91.5% |
| SLC→SEA Salt Lake City to Seattle | January 8, 2024 – March 9, 2024 | 62 | — |
| JFK→SFO New York to San Francisco | July 1, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 49 | — |
| SFO→JFK San Francisco to New York | July 6, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 36 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL861 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.
22 min late
against a median of 11 min early
Percentiles over 765 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering September 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 765 records of DL861 operating IND → LAX, 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