Philadelphia Airport

Philadelphia has been transformed - not sure if partially because of less travellers but it is most welcome for whatever reason. Arrived on BA recently and within 7 minutes of leaving the plane (I was first off) I was sitting in my car in the (very expensive) terminal parking.

Not too bad but I refer to Terminal F in Philly (and Concourse F at O'Hare) as the Twilight Zone terminals. Dirty and it feels like you are out somewhere away from everything else. The only reason I like flying in and out of Philly is if they cancel my flight (again!) I can rent a car drive home and then return to pick up my car and baggage from Allentown! On the upside - we landed without nose gear and the emergency crews were great!

Flew in and out this week with US Airways from Dublin. Dublin Immigration pre-clearance was great. On arrival in Philly we were ushered past immigration and straight out. I have never seen it so easy. Baggage trolleys were three dollars each but they machine does take credit cards. On our flight back the check-in clerk was a little unhelpful but did his job. Security for Terminal A took about 5 minutes and they were pleasant and to the point. No problems there. The whole airport was very clean and well organised. It was a fair walk to our gate A6 but again this was not a problem. I like Philly and it was quite reasonable for food - unlike Dublin !

After having read some comments about PHL was worried when travelling through PHL on way from Manchester UK to Las Vegas on US Airways. However no need to have worried. The transfer was a wonderful experience. The airport is very comfortable the security and immigration staff excellent and it took just 25 minutes from the aircraft reaching the gate to being through immigration and customs and inside the terminal.

From two recent experiences I am pleased to see that there has been a great improvement in the Int'l/domestic transfer in Terminal A. It has been re-organized so lines are not as long and there has clearly been a re-arrangement of the TSA attitude which makes the experience very much more pleasant.

Flew to Orlando via Philadelphia from the UK at the beginning of July '08. We got into Philly around 1800hrs local time and went straight through Homeland Security without waiting. There are quite a few shops to browse in whilst you are waiting for your connecting flight and the pick up and transfer of our luggage was seamless - no lost bags here! I would fly through this airport again I didn't experience any unpleasant staff and all my luggage made it there and back in one piece.

I've only been through this airport once and they were in the middle of renovating. It was very disorganized with long lines and lots of waiting. I had 4 hours between flights and I barely made the connecting flight. I came off an international flight and then waited almost an hour in line just to have my passport checked. Then it took 2 hours to pick up my baggage and recheck it. The line was incredibly long. When one man asked the personnel if he could go ahead of the others because his flight was in 15 minutes the lady told him she didn't care but he'd have to ask the other passengers. Of course that led to chaos as he tried to manuever his way through the entire line asking permission from every person. And when other people saw that they wanted to do that too. And then the other passengers started getting irritated and wouldn't let anybody in front (and rightly so). The only part that wasn't chaos was agricultural customs and that's because there were about 3 people including me in this line. I would only fly through here again if i absolutely had to. The staff was ok no one was outright rude but there were too many irritated people and not enough space and no it wasn't Christmas or any other high-traffic season.

Sad to say after my experience on April 13 Philadelphia still merits a negative review. Came in on international - very quick immigration as no other plane being processed at the time. Had only hand baggage - PHL does a lousy job of luggage so I always try to travel without check-ins. As always security was like the descent into hell - rude lazy employees yelling at everyone and basically making the whole process much harder than it needs to be - which is about the same story as every other airport in the US. For an airport so recently modernized everything looks dirty and run-down. Clearly very badly managed and no pride on the part of the employees.

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.