Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

So, obviously 6-7am sees a lot of departures, but at what other times is the airport one happening place?

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

I was told there are 3 busy times. The morning one is I think the biggest but I have no idea when the other 2 are. When I flew out in March it seemed things got busy around 2pm. But that was in concourse A so hard to tell exactly how busy it was because that place is always crowded.

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

To find out for sure on any given day, go to http://www.faa.gov

Mouse over PRODUCTS on the top menu bar. Click on Airport Arrival Demand Chart.

Then scroll down to IND in the airport list and double click on it. Click the radio button for 15 to see 15 minute intervals of scheduled flights. This includes the FedEx flights. And the times listed are in Zulu (GMT), so you'll have to convert to EST.

You'll see that the busiest times for IND are between about 10:00 pm and 12:30 am, and again between 8 and 10 am. Unfortunately, the chart doesn't cover a 24 hour time scale, but only 16 hours. So you need to do it at two different times of day to see the whole 24 hour typical period. If you do that, you'll probably also see the spike of flights between 11 am and 1 pm, which is the midday bank of FedEx flights.

The AADC chart is also useful for looking at numbers of flight delays for IND specifically. The number of cancelled flights during the time period covered by the chart is shown at the top. Also, every red bar that is to the left of the yellow line represents active flights that are late - that is, the flight is in the air, but was scheduled to land in the past.