Carrier route record
F9ORD→DFW
Frontier Airlines · Chicago to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 434
- 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 ORD to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 434 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,010 at 73.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ORD to DFW runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 416 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on ORD to DFW, 6,955 flights
These figures cover 434 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% 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 DFW
Frontier flew 434 of the 6,955 flights on ORD to DFW, about 6% of it. Its 68.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.5% to Spirit at 63.6%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 22 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 65 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 2,010 | 73.2% | 72 min | 1.29% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 134 | 71.9% | 71 min | 3.73% | C− |
| American Airlines | 4,233 | 68.3% | 94 min | 3.87% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 434 | 68.0% | 85 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 124 | 63.6% | 82 min | 3.23% | D− |
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 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am75 flights76.4%
- 8am–11am106 flights73.8%
- 11am–2pm40 flights55.6%
- 2pm–5pm46 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm151 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 55.6% on time against 76.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 151 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on ORD to DFW through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 55.1%. August is the strongest month at 81.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. November was the busiest month here, with 52 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 59.3%. 16 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 42% of the 11,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
42% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 11,264 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 76.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.69%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 15.1% 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 69.4% on time across 431 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. 434 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 DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.69% 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. 416 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DFW, every carrier
- Frontier on DFW to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to DFW73.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DFW71.9%
- American Airlines on ORD to DFW68.3%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to DFW63.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.