Carrier route record

F9ORD→FLL

Frontier Airlines · Chicago to Fort Lauderdale

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 ORD to FLL draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half 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 1,478 at 78.5% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.5% on time across 1,478 flights.

On time

67.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 145 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.31%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.8%

Every carrier on ORD to FLL, 3,424 flights

These figures cover 151 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 ORD to FLL

Frontier flew 151 of the 3,424 flights on ORD to FLL, about 4% of it. Its 67.6% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.5% to Spirit at 65.3%. 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 78.5% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 916 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,478	78.5%	67 min	0.81%	B+
American Airlines	846	71.7%	82 min	1.54%	C
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	151	67.6%	86 min	3.31%	C−
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	33	65.6%	52 min	3.03%	C−
Spirit Airlines	916	65.3%	85 min	4.48%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 4.5% 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 14 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am17 flights—
8am–11am55 flights59.6%
11am–2pm41 flights72.5%
2pm–5pm31 flights73.3%
5pm–8pm7 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 73.3% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 59.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 55 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on ORD to FLL through the year

Oct–Dec 202515 flights—
Jan–Mar 202654 flights68.6%
Apr–Jun 202682 flights66.7%

Scale runs 60% 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 67.6% on time across 151 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on ORD to FLL 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 67.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 71.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.0%. 11 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 45% of the 4,052 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
45%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
2%

45% 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 4,052 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 4,052 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 1,323 minutes out of 4,052, against a national NAS share of 21%.

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. 15.2% 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 61.1% on time across 151 flights, 6 points below 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 ORD to FLL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.31% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 145 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