Carrier route record
F9DFW→ORD
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago
- Flights
- 431
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DFW to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 431 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,010 at 71.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DFW to ORD runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 82 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 415 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on DFW to ORD, 6,964 flights
These figures cover 431 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 DFW to ORD
Frontier flew 431 of the 6,964 flights on DFW to ORD, about 6% of it. Its 69.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.5% to American at 65.4%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 71.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,239 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 15 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 2,010 | 71.7% | 94 min | 1.79% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 431 | 69.4% | 95 min | 3.25% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 135 | 68.5% | 76 min | 5.19% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 129 | 66.9% | 93 min | 1.55% | C |
| American Airlines | 4,239 | 65.4% | 77 min | 3.85% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.9% 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am32 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am116 flights76.1%
- 11am–2pm103 flights65.7%
- 2pm–5pm11 flights—
- 5pm–8pm18 flights—
- 8pm–5am151 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 84.4% for the 5am–8am 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 151 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to ORD through the year
June is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 23 points below April, the best at 72.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. November was the busiest month here, with 52 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.9%. 12 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 55% of the 12,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
55% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 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 12,089 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,952 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.25%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 14.5% 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 802 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 68.0% on time across 434 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. 431 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 DFW to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 415 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ORD, every carrier
- Frontier on ORD to DFW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DFW to ORD71.7%
- Envoy Air on DFW to ORD68.5%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to ORD66.9%
- American Airlines on DFW to ORD65.4%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.