More time is spent these days on airport departures and arrivals, writes Andy Medici for Philadelphia Business Journal.
The average departure taxi time increased from 17.82 minutes in 2019 to 18.26 minutes in 2024 at 83 major U.S. airports.
Philadelphia International Airport ranked 10th for longest average departure taxi times in 2024, according to a review of Federal Aviation Administration data.
The average time was 20.86 minutes at PHL in 2024, compared to just over 22 minutes in 2019.
Departure taxi time is the time from when your plane leaves the gate to when the plane wheels leave the ground.
PHL saw 1.77 percent of departing flights on the tarmac for an hour or more. The national average was 0.75 percent.
The longest average departure times came from the nation’s largest airports and space-constrained urban airports.
For arrivals, the percentage of flights with arrival taxi times of more than 30 minutes was 1.73 percent nationally in 2024, up from 1.43 percent in 2019.
PHL was under the national average at 1.26 percent.
Arrival taxi times is the time from when a plane’s wheels touch the runway to when it connects to a jetway.
Read more about how airports and airlines are working to improve departure and arrival times in Philadelphia Business Journal.
