Carrier route record
F9BWI→ORD
Frontier Airlines · Baltimore to Chicago
- Flights
- 150
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on BWI to ORD draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 3.0 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 150 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,148 at 75.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on BWI to ORD runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 133 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 143 completed flights
Avg delay
177 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on BWI to ORD, 2,690 flights
These figures cover 150 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on BWI to ORD
Frontier flew 150 of the 2,690 flights on BWI to ORD, about 6% of it. Its 64.3% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 85.4% to American at 38.5%. Five of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 124 | 85.4% | 50 min | 0.81% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 274 | 83.0% | 88 min | 2.92% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 82.6% | 96 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,148 | 75.1% | 88 min | 1.31% | B |
| Envoy Air | 903 | 74.7% | 85 min | 3.77% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 150 | 64.3% | 177 min | 4.00% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 43.9% | 158 min | 2.38% | F |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 26 | 38.5% | 81 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.8% 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.
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 150 flights.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am17 flights—
- 11am–2pm37 flights59.5%
- 2pm–5pm42 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm22 flights—
- 8pm–5am29 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 60.0% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.
Across the year
Frontier on BWI to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202543 flights69.8%
- Oct–Dec 202545 flights59.5%
- Jan–Mar 202640 flights65.8%
- Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 64.3% on time across 150 flights.
Frontier on BWI to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 59.5%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 50 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 65.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.3%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 9,035 reported delay minutes.
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Extreme weather
- 25%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 27% 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 4.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,035 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.00%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 622 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 runs 65.3% on time across 150 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 150 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 Frontier on BWI to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.00% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 3.0 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 143 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to ORD, every carrier
- Frontier on ORD to BWI, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to ORD85.4%
- Republic Airways on BWI to ORD83.0%
- United Airlines on BWI to ORD75.1%
- Envoy Air on BWI to ORD74.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.