PHL Philadelphia

How deep the PHL board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from PHL. This reads the same 171 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 99of the 171 destinations are flown by one airline
• 51destinations run less than once a day
• 48destinations have four or more departures a day
• 70.2%of the destinations name American Airlines, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at PHL

54 airlines appear on the PHL board and they do not hold it evenly. American Airlines is on 120 of the 171 destinations, 70.2 per cent of them, and on 62 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 497.8 of the 527.5 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is NetJets Aviation on 24 destinations. 26 of the 54 airlines at PHL appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 120 of the 171 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on a PHL sector is usually another American Airlines aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. That is why the alternate airports listed above matter more at PHL than the destination count does.

How much of the PHL board is daily

Of the 171 destinations, 120 are flown at least once a day and 51 are not, 26 of them running once a week or less. The median destination on the PHL board is flown about once a day.

An average of 0.14 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: PHL to Winston-Salem (INT) is about one a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 80.9 of the 527.5 departures a day, 15.3 per cent of the whole board. The other 166 destinations are spread widely enough that a courier who misses the first departure at PHL usually has somewhere else to look on the same board.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Albert Lea AEL	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	1,558	plan this
Bar Harbor BHB	the United States	JTZ	1	762	plan this
Boca Raton BCT	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	1,567	plan this
Charlottesville CHO	the United States	Executive Jet Management	1	338	plan this
Charlottetown YYG	Canada	Flexjet	1	1,214	plan this
Cincinnati LUK	the United States	flyADVANCED	1	792	plan this
Cleveland CGF	the United States	Flexjet	1	559	plan this
Fort Worth FTW	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	2,124	plan this
Frederick FDK	the United States	Tradewind Aviation	1	190	plan this
Harlingen HRL	the United States	GlobalX Airlines	1	2,569	plan this

The ten destinations out of PHL where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable. 32 further destinations sit in the same position and are listed in the board above.

The way back from PHL

The desk holds the return direction for 75 of the 171 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On three of them the return into PHL runs thinner than the outbound by more than a quarter. The widest gaps are Newark (EWR) at 0.71 out a day against 0.29 back, Baltimore (BWI) at 0.43 out a day against 0.29 back and Washington (DCA) at 2.9 out a day against 2.1 back.

It runs the other way as well: Portland (PDX) files 2.3 a day back into PHL against 1.1 outbound, which is the shape that strands a courier at this end rather than at the far end.

The clock at PHL

PHL keeps America/New_York time, eight hours behind Dubai in summer and nine hours behind in winter, because the clock here moves and the Gulf clock does not.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 01:00 at PHL, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for an hour. That is a narrow window for a signature, a customs query or an authority to release, and it is the reason a consignment for PHL is briefed the day before rather than on the morning it flies.

The night at PHL

5 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into London (LHR) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from PHL that lands inside it leaves around 11:09, on a modelled block of 7h 21m. Into Amsterdam (AMS) the door shuts at 23:00 local, so the last departure from PHL that lands inside it leaves around 09:17, on a modelled block of 7h 43m. Into Paris (CDG) the door shuts at 00:00 local, so the last departure from PHL that lands inside it leaves around 10:18, on a modelled block of 7h 42m. Those three departure times out of PHL are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where PHL turns up on the rest of this site

PHL carries two other pages on this site as well: the United States country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport and the PHL transit page for the connecting case, where a courier changes aircraft here rather than starting or finishing.

The site publishes 30 airport pair pages that start or end at PHL, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Philadelphia to Atlanta (ATL), Philadelphia to Orlando (MCO) and Philadelphia to Boston (BOS).

16 courier postings name PHL as the airport a courier here flies from: Philadelphia, Allentown and Trenton.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with PHL already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 171 destinations above.