PHL is one of the most punctual airports in the world

Philadelphia International Airport is one of the most punctual airports in the world.

PHL came in eighth place among airports globally in 2023 for being on time, down from fifth place in 2022, according to a report from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

The annual report, which was released this month, examines the number of flights in a given year for every airport and takes into account factors including if airplanes leave the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled departure time.

One aspect that contributes to PHL’s high ranking is that the airport had fewer flights arriving and departing recently than in previous years, said Jim Tyrrell, chief revenue officer of the Philadelphia International Airport. In 2023, about 345 flights on average departed PHL every day compared to 475 per day in 2019.

Some airlines are also flying larger planes with more seats out of PHL but departing less frequently, he says.

“The activity that takes place on our runways, it’s down considerably, primarily due to upsizing of aircraft and the decreasing of the number of takeoffs and landings,” he said

The top destinations in 2023 out of PHL were all national flights, according to data from Cirium, which looked at the number of seats available for purchase on flights, regardless of if they were bought, and if flights were canceled.

“If you look at the top 10 destinations, you’ll see a combination of warm weather cities and major hub airports,” said Tyrrell.

The top destinations out of PHL per number of seats, according to data from Cirium:

Orlando was the top destination out of PHL in 2023 — it had about 98,000 more seats on flights available last year than it did in 2019.

“Orlando is always on the top of our list,” said Tyrrell. “Philadelphia can’t put enough seats in the market for Florida destinations to satisfy the demand. Every flight we have going south to the Florida markets is usually filled.”

While PHL had more travelers in 2023 than the prior year, it is still recovering from the pandemic. Last year, the airport had almost 17 million seats on flights, compared to nearly 20 million in 2019, according to the Cirium data.

Some flights that were discontinued after 2019 also haven’t yet returned to PHL.

Internationally, those flights include Dubrovnik, Croatia, and Prague, Czech Republic, which were successful flights for American Airlines on their Boeing 767 airplanes, says Tyrrell.

When the pandemic hit, airlines took the opportunity to retire older planes for more efficient ones, and American retired their fleet of 767 and 330 aircrafts, he says. The flights to Dubrovnik and Prague will “probably” return to PHL in Tyrrell’s opinion because they were pretty successful, but it’s “an aircraft issue,” he says.

“They won’t come back until American has the fleet necessary to fly them, and that’s going to happen in the next year or so,” he said.

Once the company has the planes needed, he thinks more “boutique European destinations” out of PHL could be offered because of them. “We think it’s going to be a game changer,” he said.