Traveling through the Philly airport might get better. Its new CEO wants to see the passenger experience upgraded by 2026.
Atif Saeed, who comes to Philadelphia from Minnesota, said the airport is 80% recovered from the pandemic, with projections of a full recovery by early 2025.
Atif Saeed, Philadelphia’s new aviation chief, may have some of the most lofty New Year’s resolutions in the city.
In 2023, he wants to make travelers more proud of Philadelphia International Airport, he said, and hopes that an increasing number of people will assess their time there as among the best travel experiences they’ve had.
Ultimately, he said, his eyes are on 2026, a year in which multiple events, including the country’s 250th birthday and the men’s World Cup, will highlight Philadelphia.
“The pinnacle is going to be 2026, when we will have the spotlight on our airport and our community,” he said. “We want to make sure that we’re fully prepared and provide the experience that is in step with what we want our community to be represented as internationally.”
This three-year goal is especially ambitious as the travel industry continues to rebound from the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and PHL works to improve its ranking after a recent last-place finish in a survey of passenger satisfaction at large North American airports with 10 million to 32.9 million passengers a year.
In the same survey, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport — which Saeed oversaw in his last role as chief financial officer for the Metropolitan Airport Commission of Minnesota — came in first among mega airports, those with 33 million or more passengers a year.
In an interview this week, The Inquirer asked the new chief executive officer of the Philadelphia Division of Aviation how he plans to improve the passenger experience at PHL and what his goals are for the airport.
The interview has been condensed for brevity and clarity.
Where would you say the airport, and air travel in general, stand in terms of pandemic recovery? When will you be comfortable saying “air travel is back”?
Currently, we are about 80% recovered compared to 2019. There are certainly airports around the country that have fully recovered, and most of them are sunny destinations.
Things are lagging on two fronts: One is business travel, which has been slow to come back, and that’s a universal theme. The more business-dependent you are as a community, the slower the recovery is. So that is one place where we are a little bit lagging behind. And the other one is international connectivity. That is also true for all airports that are primarily serving international communities — and with us being a gateway to Europe, that has been slow to come back.
We are projecting for us to be back to the normal pre-pandemic level, in aggregate, by the late-2024, early 2025 time frame. But these are just projections. They get updated all the time.
What are you going to do to improve the experience for Philadelphia travelers?
There is about $1.3 billion in capital programs that are approved and in the queue over the next couple of years to be able to enhance the overall terminal experience.
There are multiple things that are being done operationally. There’s a program that was started in 2019, the volunteer assistance program. Under that, there are many volunteers that come to the airport on a daily basis and provide service that enhances the overall customer experience.
There’s master planning being done on the IT side that is very customer-centric as well, in terms of the guest experience.
Perhaps the most powerful one is essentially a guest experience council, made up of representatives from everybody that does business at the airport. And what they are trying to cultivate is a unified customer experience for all travelers, regardless of which agencies you are interacting with at the airport.
After the fall survey was released, Michael Taylor, J.D. Power managing director of travel, hospitality, and retail, said of the airport: “There’s not enough space at check-in lobbies and for TSA security equipment. … The buildings aren’t designed to handle all the people traveling.” Are the measures you just mentioned going to address that, or is more physical space needed?
Airports around the country have been upgrading their facilities. And there have been plans for us to do the same thing — in part with the $1.3 billion we talked about, but also with a master planning effort that had to be put on hold because of the pandemic.
That master planning effort is going to be concluded in the summer of 2023, and that is going to tackle every single one of the things that you listed and beyond. It literally is intended for us to enhance our terminals and get to a level of sophistication of the airports that seem to be slightly ahead of us. Clearly, those airports that have brand-new terminals and facilities would rank higher than us. So we hope to catch up in that area through that master planning effort.
How would you summarize your top priority as you look to 2023?
Making sure that everything we do is converging to create a better experience for our passengers every single day. We’ve got a lot coming toward us in terms of major events. We want to get to a point where every single person who travels through the airport feels like it was one of the best airport experiences they’ve ever had.
Is there anything you want Philadelphians to know about you personally? What do you like to do outside of work?
They’ve got a very excited resident, citizen in their community. I love to eat, and this is a place where you can find just about anything that you want in terms of good cuisine. I like to recreationally bike, and there’s tremendous opportunity to have that outdoor activity. I also like to walk. I love urban living and the accessibility to everything.
It just feels like home. I’m really, really excited to be part of the community and to do work and service for the community.