Philadelphia Airport

The worst airport in the USA for losing your baggage or bags not making your connecting flight. Baggage problems are especially bad if you are connecting through a commuter / small plane out of Terminal F. I fly almost every week and Philadelphia is the only airport where I have had this problem. Last year they lost my bag at least twice once for 3-4 days. The other issue is that the Terminal F flights can experience much worse flight delays than the big planes. I've experienced 2-4 hour delays due to incoming flight delays stacking up on top of outgoing delays. This last Friday I told them to put me in a hotel overnight rather than waiting 3 hours to leave and arriving at my destination at 3am. They couldn't divert my bag but I said that was OK - my bag didn't arrive till the next morning anyway so if I had taken the late flight the previous night I would have been missing my bag anyway!

What is it about the TSA in PHL? They are hard to deal with in most US airports but in Philly it seems their aim in life is to slow the airport experience as much as possible and enhance it with a generous dose of rudeness. All the shouting and marshalling of passengers makes it feel like animals in a slaughterhouse.

Living in the Detroit area my business and family trips to Philadelphia are always via Northwest Airlines which practically has a monopoly in Detroit. In PHL the terminal that Northwest uses is narrow horribly crowded sorely in need of serious upgrades. Worse still the TSA area is very narrow crowded and obviously temporary consisting of painted plywood walls and serpentine cattle chute lines. Lines at this terminal's TSA almost always back up down the long corridor connecting the terminal with baggage claim and the parking garage. On my last trip (early Oct 2007) I had to wait in line 35 minutes to clear security. At this location TSA personnel like to shout directions at passengers all of which is totally unnecessary and adds to passenger stress and confusion mainly because most passengers can't hear what is being said amid the background noise. While connected to the other terminals for some reason PHL doesn't permit passengers to move around. If you arrive early and want a better selection of restaurants than the terrible ones on offer at the terminal used by Northwest PHL forces you to go through TSA twice! A major construction project is now underway and when completed in 2008 may cause me to redo my review. For now there isn't a lot to recommend.

PHL can be a pleasant to travel through but not always. Traffic on the taxiways can lead to long delays on the ground when your waiting to depart the runway. The facilities are updated yet cramped and there are plenty of food and shopping selections. Using Atlantic City BWI or Newark may fair better in the future but for now I'm sticking with PHL.

Philly has improved a lot. It is still the most crowded of all airports but security waiting time was improved since I flew last. What I liked most is the new Business Lounge of US Airways in Terminal 1A. Large and open nice seating and good food. If only the planes would be half as good as the lounge US Air would be a nice choice. What I like also about Philly is the nice shopping and food court in the C concourse.

During peak times the narrow concourses and insufficient seating areas become clogged with passengers. Walking between concourses takes a while. Not all concourses are connected both airside and landside which often requires you to walk outdoors to go to another terminal. Queues for TSA grow quite long at peak times and since there isn't much room for people to wait near the checkpoints the queues snake back down the corridors toward the ticket counters. PHL has only two parallel runways which are insufficient for a major domestic hub and increasingly popular low fare destination especially when bad weather hits. Even when the weather is perfect though delays can quickly stack up.

All the US Airways flight must be landing within a 2 hour window not counting AF LH and BA flights. Therefore the passport control took over 2 hours if you landed between 02:30PM to 04:30PM A nightmare... add another 45 minutes to 60 minutes for security check. Please do allow 3 hours in between your connecting flights.

Used PHL yesterday for a BA flight PHL-LHR-AMS. Facilities on the land side of terminal A-west checkin could be better. I went to international arrivals for a seat and a cup of tea to pass the time till BA counters would open. Facilities in the A (international) terminal are good sufficient seating selection of restaurants and shops. TSA check was certainly not worse than at other US airports (they say "please" nowadays). I like the Philly "one terminal" concept.

The ticketing and baggage claim areas were cramped and outdated and the baggage claim for my airline (Southwest) was in a different terminal than where my flight arrived. The line for security extended back into the skybridge connecting the terminal to the parking garage. Terminal food selections were mediocre although not too horribly overpriced by airport standards. Passenger lounges mediocre. There is a train that connects the airport to downtown but its primary passengers appeared to be airport employees. On my train to downtown the air conditioning unit was soaking the first three rows. The worst part about Philadelphia is that despite its status as a major low-fare hub and international entry point it only has two runways for commercial service. If there is any kind of bad weather - as happened the morning I flew home - the flight delays just compound. When I left for the airport three hours before my scheduled departure my flight was supposed to leave 30 minutes late. When I got to the airport the delay had increased to 70 minutes. Once the delay got bumped to three hours - - meaning that I would be stuck in Nashville overnight if I got out of Philly - they re-routed me through Chicago. However that meant switching concourses - and having to go through another clogged TSA checkpoint. I didn't even have time to re-tie my shoes before having to run onto the jetbridge of my new flight. The next time I have to go to Philadelphia on business I'm flying to Baltimore and taking a train.

Flew into PHL from MAN (US Airways) then connected to RSW. Have to disagree with previous comments. One of the most efficient American airports I have visited. Through immigration baggage and customs in 15 minutes. Easy connection (on foot rather than train or bus) to Terminal C. Return just as easy. Good food and shopping options. Significantly better experience than ATL LAX or JFK - would travel via PHL again.