Carrier route record

F9MCO→MDW

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Chicago

Flights: 232
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on MCO to MDW sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 232 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on MCO to MDW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

75.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 229 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.29%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.5%

Every carrier on MCO to MDW, 2,780 flights

These figures cover 232 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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 MCO to MDW

Frontier flew 232 of the 2,780 flights on MCO to MDW, about 8% of it. Its 75.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 75.5% to Southwest at 70.0%.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to MDW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	232	75.5%	81 min	1.29%	B
Southwest Airlines	2,548	70.0%	56 min	2.08%	C

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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am39 flights92.1%
8am–11am21 flights—
11am–2pm52 flights78.4%
2pm–5pm38 flights62.2%
5pm–8pm45 flights73.3%
8pm–5am37 flights64.9%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 62.2% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 52 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to MDW through the year

Jul–Sep 202557 flights82.1%
Oct–Dec 202567 flights78.8%
Jan–Mar 202679 flights66.7%
Apr–Jun 202629 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 75.5% on time across 232 flights.

Frontier on MCO to MDW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 82.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 66.7%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 77 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.3%. 24 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 43% of the 4,523 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
Extreme weather
26%
Carrier
21%
National Airspace System
11%

Extreme weather accounts for 26% 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 4.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,523 reported delay minutes.

43% 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 4,523 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 990 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 80.3% on time across 233 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. 232 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 MCO to MDW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 232 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 75.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 229 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures