Carrier route record
F9ORD→RDU
Frontier Airlines · Chicago to Raleigh
- Flights
- 131
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- 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 RDU draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 2.3 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 131 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 521 at 77.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.1% on time across 521 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 125 completed flights
Avg delay
137 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on ORD to RDU, 3,592 flights
These figures cover 131 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.6% 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 RDU
Frontier flew 131 of the 3,592 flights on ORD to RDU, about 4% of it. Its 66.4% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 79.1% to PSA at 50.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 77.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 61.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 555 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 67 | 79.1% | 65 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 521 | 77.1% | 54 min | 1.73% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,298 | 76.8% | 77 min | 1.00% | B |
| Republic Airways | 1,018 | 73.5% | 69 min | 2.85% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 131 | 66.4% | 137 min | 4.58% | C− |
| American Airlines | 555 | 61.8% | 96 min | 3.42% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 85 min | 0.00% | F+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.4% 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 25 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am13 flights—
- 8am–11am6 flights—
- 11am–2pm76 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm33 flights46.9%
- 5pm–8pm3 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 72.2% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 46.9%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 76 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on ORD to RDU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202546 flights81.8%
- Oct–Dec 202548 flights51.1%
- Jan–Mar 202617 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202620 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. 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 66.4% on time across 131 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on ORD to RDU logged 46 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 48 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 17 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 66.4% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.7%. 20 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. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 5,755 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,246 of the 5,755 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,755 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.58%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 17.6% 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 646 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 57.7% on time across 131 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 131 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.58% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.3 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 125 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to RDU, every carrier
- Frontier on RDU to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to RDU77.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to RDU76.8%
- Republic Airways on ORD to RDU73.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to RDU61.8%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.