Carrier route record

F9ORD→PHX

Frontier Airlines · Chicago to Phoenix

Flights: 203
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on ORD to PHX 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 203 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,938 at 79.1% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 1,938 flights.

On time

67.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 194 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.94%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.9%

Every carrier on ORD to PHX, 5,594 flights

These figures cover 203 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 PHX

Frontier flew 203 of the 5,594 flights on ORD to PHX, about 4% of it. Its 67.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.1% to Southwest at 58.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 58.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 460 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,938	79.1%	66 min	0.41%	B+
American Airlines	2,993	71.4%	84 min	2.34%	C
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	203	67.5%	82 min	3.94%	C−
Southwest Airlines	460	58.3%	67 min	2.17%	D

The spread between United and Southwest is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 27 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am40 flights86.5%
8am–11am46 flights71.7%
11am–2pm19 flights—
2pm–5pm69 flights59.4%
5pm–8pm6 flights—
8pm–5am23 flights—

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 86.5% of the time, against 59.4% for the afternoon window. That is 27 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 69 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on ORD to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 202538 flights60.0%
Oct–Dec 202549 flights58.7%
Jan–Mar 202691 flights70.5%
Apr–Jun 202625 flights—

Scale runs 50% 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 67.5% on time across 203 flights.

Frontier on ORD to PHX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 70.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 58.7%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 68 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 79.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.5%. 21 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 62% of the 5,174 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
62%
National Airspace System
17%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
4%

62% 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 5,174 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 5,174 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 86.5% on time here.

Cancellations run at 3.94%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 12.4% 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 1,440 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 68.8% on time across 203 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. 203 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 PHX

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.94% 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. 194 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