Carrier route record
F9FLL→ORD
Frontier Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Chicago
- Flights
- 151
- 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 FLL to ORD draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 2.5 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 151 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,479 at 74.7% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.7% on time across 1,479 flights.
Key figures
On time
61.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 144 completed flights
Avg delay
148 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.1%
Every carrier on FLL to ORD, 3,422 flights
These figures cover 151 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.2% 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 FLL to ORD
Frontier flew 151 of the 3,422 flights on FLL to ORD, about 4% of it. Its 61.1% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 74.7% to Southwest at 38.7%. One 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 74.7% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 61.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 913 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,479 | 74.7% | 81 min | 0.74% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 846 | 70.0% | 103 min | 1.54% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 913 | 61.3% | 73 min | 3.29% | D− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 151 | 61.1% | 148 min | 3.31% | D− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 38.7% | 98 min | 3.03% | F− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.3% 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 31 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–11am48 flights87.2%
- 11am–2pm12 flights—
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm29 flights—
- 8pm–5am43 flights56.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 87.2% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 48 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on FLL to ORD through the year
- Oct–Dec 202515 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202654 flights46.2%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights69.6%
Scale runs 40% 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 61.1% on time across 151 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on FLL to ORD logged 15 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 54 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 82 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 61.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 8,312 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
53% 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 8,312 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 8,312 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.31%, 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. 22.2% 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 1,182 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 67.6% on time across 151 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 151 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 FLL to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.31% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.5 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 144 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to ORD, every carrier
- Frontier on ORD to FLL, the return leg
- United Airlines on FLL to ORD74.7%
- American Airlines on FLL to ORD70.0%
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to ORD61.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.