PHL Airport ontime record
by Hella ~ May 6th, 2006I just saw an early edition of tomorrow’s (Sunday’s) edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a front page story confirms what I already suspected: Philadelphia International Airport is the nation’s worst in terms of ontime record. Almost two years of experience flying into and out of here has left me numb to how bad it is I guess.
The security lines are also notorious. When you have an early (6:30am) flight, expect the line to be miles long. It’s nothing for airline employees to come through the line pulling people for flights that are close to takeoff. Sitting on the tarmac for over an hour is actually routine in my experience.
On my most recent trip to Orlando, the flight was scheduled to takeoff around 8:30pm. However, air traffic was so congested in Philadelphia that the controllers would not allow my plane to takeoff from Atlanta (AirTran). The plane finally arrived in Philadelphia, but not until around 11:30pm. Once on the plane, we had to sit on the runway for a good half hour. It had started sleeting and we sat too long so had to go to the de-icing station. Arriving in Orlando around 2am is no fun, particularly when you’re relying on a rental car and everyone who just landed with you is as well. At 2am, that makes for a very long line when only 1 rental car agent is working the counter.
[tags]phl[/tags]
January 5th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
I just flew out of PHL tonight and as usual the plane was 2+ hours late leaving. They said it was because of the weather and air traffic control. It barely sprinkled all day. I’ve flown round trip to PHL 6 times in the last two months of which 5 were over an hour late. They need to clean house and fire everyone there starting with the air traffic controllers. What a bunch losers!
March 18th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
We are Joe & Sandy Golesh, from Mechanicsburg, PA. We were due to leave from Phila. to Puerto Rico for a week’s vacation for our 40th Wedding Anniversary, on Friday at 9:35AM.
Don’t know here your information came from, but we were one of the first flights not to take off on Friday. IF US Air had been listening to the weather(??) they would have left the gate at the scheduled time and not inconvenience 95% of their passengers, to accomodate 5% from connecting flights. ESPECIALLY with a storm approaching which all the News Stations were covering.
US Air kept making petty excuses for the 5 hour delay (on the tarmac) which we experienced. As we were sitting on the tarmac, the last flight to leave the airport took off!!!!!! After 5 hours the Piolit announced we were going back to the terminal to deplane so the Crew could get off and IF another Crew could be found we “may” be able to continue.
After 15 to 20 minutes the announcement was made that the flight was cancelled. The announcement was call the 800# to reschedule you flights. There will be NO vouchers for hotels as this was due to weather. Bullshit, this flight was held up by US Airways, not the weather!!! There were no US Air staff to help out the thousands of travellers who were stranded.
Then the luggage was announced as going to Terminal B ‘G’ gondola, we were leaving from terminal “A”. WHY??? Why not claim luggage in Terminal A??? As it was all flights originating in Phila. that were cancelled, went to Terminal “B”. Imagine the insanity??? They announced a change to shere our luggage would be 3 times. The gondola’s were so full they became jammed and the bagage handlers had to unload luggage and stack it in the isles.
Airline passengers were walking around with blank looks on their faces and the Lost Luggage Lines were unbelievable. There were No Hotel Rooms available, No Taxi’s, No Limos and the Airlines would not allow us back to the Terminals to get food. We only had the small portion of our boarding passes. So there was No Food, other than snacks, which I assume ran out at some point.
We stood in line at Aunt Annie’s Pretzels for 45min. to 1 hour (maybe more) waiting for more pretzels to arrive. The traveller’s behind me, travelling with 2 boys (10 & 8) had been on the tarmac for 7 hours. Unbelievable.
Our daughter, drove us to the Airport from Coatesville, on her way to work at Dupont, in Wilmington. Friday night she tried to drive home and could’nt make it, so stayed with friends from work (who live in Newark, DE). When we called our daughter, her friends drove to the Phila. Airport to pick us up. There are Very Good people out there who risk their comfort for others whom they have never met. Thank You Tom & Val. We spent a comfortable night in their spare bedroom. Certainly hope there are other Stories of Goodness to come out of this mess.
Finally got through to the 800# about midnight. No flights avaiable for Saturday, so we booked for Sunday. When we arrived at the Airport around 9:15AM the Airport looked as bad as when we left. Thousands of people in lines inside and outside of the International Terminal.
It is hard to believe that the Airlines can be so inept, when weather is a constant and on going problem.
October 10th, 2007 at 4:37 am
[...] As you may be aware, Europe is a distant continent accessible only by steamer or expensive, unreliable plane travel. To reduce costs for my touring musical ensemble, I found what may be the cheapest flight from the middle-Atlantic states to Rome, Italy. Not surprisingly, this flight departed from one of least-reliable travel marketplaces in these United States: Philadelphia International Airport. [...]