Philadelphia International Airport Ranks Last: Plan Ahead

Philadelphia International Airport finished last among large North American airports in J.D. Power’s satisfaction study for the sixth year running, released on September 16.

The number that actually matters is not the rank. PHL’s score rose 26 points to 596 out of 1,000, and it still came last, because everyone else improved too. If Philadelphia is your destination rather than your connection, our guide to things to do in Philadelphia covers what is worth the trip.

Sixth Year Last, and the Score Still Went Up

Satisfaction rose across the board this year, the third consecutive annual increase. Mega airports gained 14 points, large airports 13 and medium airports 16, according to J.D. Power’s own release on the 2026 study.

Against that, PHL’s 26-point gain is roughly double its category’s average improvement. It moved faster than the field and finished behind it anyway, which tells you how far back the starting position was.

Michael Taylor of J.D. Power credited real changes. KYW Newsradio reported that PHL modernized restrooms, added device chargers to seating areas and widened the range of restaurants, and that the airport scored better in most categories.

So the improvements are not cosmetic and they are not imaginary. They are simply not the thing that is holding the airport back.

What 596 Out of 1,000 Actually Measures

The study asks travelers who passed through an airport in the previous 30 days about seven areas of the experience, and the fieldwork ran a full year. That makes it a durable read on the building rather than a snapshot of one bad week.

It also means the score is about how a place feels to move through: space, light, seating, queues, food. It is not a measure of on-time performance, and it is not a measure of whether your bag arrives.

Worth keeping straight, because a well-run airport in a cramped building scores badly here, and that is close to what the panel is describing.

The Building Is 86 Years Old

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Taylor’s diagnosis in plain terms: the airport needs new terminal facilities, and the constraint is space. “When you run out of space, that’s a very limiting factor,” he said.

The specifics are physical. Waiting areas are too small for the number of people a modern widebody unloads into them, and there is little natural light, while the airports that rate highest tend to have high ceilings, daylight and views.

Some 30.1 million passengers went through PHL last year, close to the ceiling of its own category, and nearly 70 percent of them were flying American Airlines. That concentration matters to a traveler because it means most people at PHL are there on a connection they did not choose independently of the airline.

The airport is not standing still. Mayor Cherelle Parker said an investment of nearly 2 billion dollars in modernization is underway, and interim chief executive Tracy Borda said in a statement ahead of the study that PHL “is in the midst of that work, not at the end of it,” acknowledging that construction itself affects the experience.

That is the honest version of the next few years: the fix and the disruption are the same project.

Chicago O’Hare Is the Other Warning

PHL was last among large airports. O’Hare was last among the mega airports, the tier for airports handling at least 33 million passengers a year.

For anyone building an itinerary, that is the more useful pairing than either result alone. Two of the country’s busiest connecting hubs sit at the bottom of their respective tiers, and a lot of one-stop domestic and transatlantic routings run through one or the other.

At the top end, Minneapolis-Saint Paul led the mega group at 684 and Charleston led the medium group at 712. Where you connect is a variable you often can control, and the spread between best and worst in a tier is wide enough to be worth a filter on the booking screen.

PHL is also still adding flights into that undersized building. American added Vero Beach to Philadelphia service for winter 2026, which is the growth side of the same squeeze.

Plan Your PHL Connection Around Three Things

First, connection time. Small holding areas and active construction are exactly the conditions in which a legal minimum connection becomes a tight one, so buy the longer layover when the fare difference is small.

Second, where you wait. Food, beverage and retail are the part of PHL that survey respondents consistently rate well, so the gate area is the worst place to spend a long layover and the concourse is the better one.

Third, the alternative. If your routing is flexible and the price is close, a different connecting hub is a real lever, and it is the only one of the three that is entirely yours to pull.