Carrier route record
F9CLT→ORD
Frontier Airlines · Charlotte to Chicago
- Flights
- 157
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CLT to ORD draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 157 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 372 at 83.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.6% on time across 372 flights.
Key figures
On time
62.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 149 completed flights
Avg delay
122 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on CLT to ORD, 4,300 flights
These figures cover 157 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 23.5% 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 CLT to ORD
Frontier flew 157 of the 4,300 flights on CLT to ORD, about 4% of it. Its 62.4% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.6% to Frontier at 62.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 83.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,000 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 372 | 83.6% | 80 min | 2.96% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 160 | 81.6% | 128 min | 5.00% | B− |
| United Airlines | 611 | 71.1% | 87 min | 2.13% | C |
| American Airlines | 3,000 | 71.0% | 72 min | 2.87% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 157 | 62.4% | 122 min | 4.46% | D− |
The spread between Republic and American is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am23 flights—
- 11am–2pm25 flights—
- 2pm–5pm48 flights73.3%
- 5pm–8pm3 flights—
- 8pm–5am58 flights41.5%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 41.5% on time, against 73.3% for the 2pm–5pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 58 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CLT to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202531 flights53.3%
- Oct–Dec 202558 flights69.6%
- Jan–Mar 202647 flights63.6%
- Apr–Jun 202621 flights—
Scale runs 45% 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 62.4% on time across 157 flights.
Frontier on CLT to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 69.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 53.3%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 52 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 67.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.1%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 74% of the 6,814 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.
- 74%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 4%Carrier
74% 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 6,814 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 74 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 6,814 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.46%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 23.5% 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 599 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 67.1% on time across 157 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 157 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 CLT to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.46% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two 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. 149 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to ORD, every carrier
- Frontier on ORD to CLT, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CLT to ORD83.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on CLT to ORD81.6%
- United Airlines on CLT to ORD71.1%
- American Airlines on CLT to ORD71.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.