Carrier route record
F9ORD→AUS
Frontier Airlines · Chicago to Austin
- Flights
- 118
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on ORD to AUS draws a C−. About 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 118 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,471 at 77.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ORD to AUS runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 115 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 112 completed flights
Avg delay
122 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on ORD to AUS, 3,169 flights
These figures cover 118 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.9% 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 ORD to AUS
Frontier flew 118 of the 3,169 flights on ORD to AUS, about 4% of it. Its 66.1% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.9% to Southwest at 62.3%. Three 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 77.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,190 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,471 | 77.9% | 67 min | 1.09% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 88 | 73.3% | 68 min | 2.27% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 95 | 68.9% | 54 min | 5.26% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,190 | 67.0% | 82 min | 2.86% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 118 | 66.1% | 122 min | 5.08% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 62.3% | 60 min | 0.97% | D+ |
United leads American by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 26 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am32 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am17 flights—
- 11am–2pm3 flights—
- 2pm–5pm39 flights57.9%
- 5pm–8pm27 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.9% of the time, against 57.9% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 39 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on ORD to AUS through the year
- Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202530 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202643 flights62.5%
- Apr–Jun 202620 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 70%. 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 66.1% on time across 118 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on ORD to AUS logged 25 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 30 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 43 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 20 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 66.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.8%. 6 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 53% of the 4,623 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
- 34%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 2%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 4,623 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 4,623 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 1,577 minutes out of 4,623, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.08%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 17.9% 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 977 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 65.1% on time across 118 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. 118 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 ORD to AUS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.08% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 112 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to AUS, every carrier
- Frontier on AUS to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to AUS77.9%
- American Airlines on ORD to AUS67.0%
- Southwest Airlines on ORD to AUS62.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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.