Carrier route record
F9ORD→TPA
Frontier Airlines · Chicago to Tampa
- Flights
- 173
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- 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 TPA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 2.6 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 173 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,403 at 78.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ORD to TPA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 165 completed flights
Avg delay
153 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.0%
Every carrier on ORD to TPA, 3,217 flights
These figures cover 173 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.0% 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 TPA
Frontier flew 173 of the 3,217 flights on ORD to TPA, about 5% of it. Its 66.7% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 100.0% to Envoy at 50.0%. Four 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 78.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,141 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,403 | 78.4% | 71 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 283 | 71.3% | 97 min | 2.83% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 214 | 71.2% | 91 min | 0.93% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 1,141 | 68.0% | 70 min | 1.93% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 173 | 66.7% | 153 min | 4.62% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 16 min | 0.00% | F+ |
United leads American by 10 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 173 flights.
- 5am–8am29 flights—
- 8am–11am42 flights65.9%
- 11am–2pm16 flights—
- 2pm–5pm47 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm30 flights—
- 8pm–5am9 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 68.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
Frontier on ORD to TPA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202544 flights57.1%
- Oct–Dec 202539 flights70.3%
- Jan–Mar 202664 flights62.3%
- Apr–Jun 202626 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 66.7% on time across 173 flights.
Frontier on ORD to TPA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 70.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 57.1%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 58 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 81.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 63.3%. 18 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 73% of the 8,432 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.
- 73%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
73% 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 8,432 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 73 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 8,432 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.62%, 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. 20.0% 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 1,012 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 62.3% on time across 173 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 173 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 TPA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.62% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.6 hours; 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. 165 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to TPA, every carrier
- Frontier on TPA to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to TPA78.4%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to TPA71.3%
- Southwest Airlines on ORD to TPA71.2%
- American Airlines on ORD to TPA68.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.