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I’ll Defend Philly International Every Time Another Airport Survey Tries to Destroy It
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
While we wait for Dave Dombrowski to make one more World Series clinching move before the trade deadline is over I have to get something off my chest. Philly International airport is the most hated on airport in the country and I never understand why. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Will you get your occasional baggage claim raccoon? Yes, but that’s part of the fun! Are the bathrooms constantly drenched? Yes and I can’t understand why. Every airport has its good and bad! It’s still way better than what people say about it. Good food and drink options, no tramcars between terminals, and adequate enough waits in the TSA lines. Still when a new survey comes out about worst airports PHL is firmly planted at the bottom. This one was recently done by AirHelp and I’m convinced they’ve never been there. In the survey the criteria the airport was judged on was on-time performance, food and shops and customer service. Here’s how PHL performed:
Now on-time performance was weighed HEAVY! It was 60% of the cumulative store, which is dumb. So many things go into planes being on-time that are out of an airport’s control. You ever have a class in college where the group project was 80% of the grade? It was nuts. No one ever equally pulled their weight and this is coming from a guy that never did.
I judge airports on three things: time through TSA to the gate, my plane being on-time, and food options. I don’t care about customer service because I’ve worked in customer service enough times to know that that gate agent who is being a dick just had it thrown back in his/her face 10x harder by some shithead. So while I get to get on the plane and leave all my problems behind she is shackled to Terminal C for the rest of her shift to deal with the next piece of shit in a Hawaiian shirt. Now here’s the good news. There are 10,000 airports in the world that do commercial flights so #159 is pretty good! Here’s the kicker though, there are only 37 Class B airports in the country, which PHL falls under. Fort Lauderdale, which is behind PHL in the rankings isn’t included in that. Newark which came in last place is. So take these ratings with a grain of salt and honestly don’t even argue about them. This is the airline version of ESPN not ranking Jalen Hurts in the top-10 because they hope the clip goes viral. Did I know what AirHelp was when I woke up today? No. Do I still know what they do? No but I’ll remember their name now. The fact I’m eating the trash and talking about it is bad enough, but I’ll stick up for PHL against anyone. Stupid airport surveys, travelers from different cities, and especially annoying LA influencers that act like this:
Did the people who conducted this survey not hear about the top-5 shortest wait time in the country? I like PHL for what it is. I don’t know what it has to do to get its due, but then again I don’t care. As long as it keeps running the way it’s running and they continue to update I’m fine with it. My only gripe will always be A West. A West is the bane of my existence. Illy Coffee, a Dunkin’, and a Chickie’s & Pete’s is not how we say arrivederci to our International visitors. All fine establishments, but maybe we cool it on the finger paintings and god knows what these are and get some more restaurants:
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com