August 24, 2021
Thom Carroll/for PhillyVoice
The Philadelphia International Airport was ranked in the top 10 most affordable airports for international flights, but the data shows that flights out of the Newark Liberty International Airport or JFK International Airport are more affordable.
The Philadelphia International Airport ranked in the top 10 cheapest airports for international flights — but you're still better off flying out of JFK or Newark.
Scott's Cheap Flights, a website that searches the internet for discounts on international flights, compiled a list of the top 10 best and worst airports for international travel after analyzing their possible airfare deals every week. It found JFK and Newark were the top two cheapest airports for international flights in the country.
PHL ranked ninth overall in affordability after Scott's Cheap Flights found 150 deals over the past year, with an average of $473 roundtrip for international flights. The website found flights from PHL to Dubai for $629 round trip.
"PHL's airline partners offer access to a variety of international and domestic destinations at fares that fit a range of budgets. We're excited that the Scott's rankings can help guests see where they can go from PHL and that they can get a great deal from their hometown airport," Kate Sullivan, Deputy Director of Strategic Partnerships, said in an email to PhillyVoice.
Newark airport took second place for affordability with a total of 208 deals and an average round trip ticket price of $460.
JFK International Airport earned the No. 1 spot on the site, with its 239 deals averaging $493 per ticket. It currently has flights to Iceland for $348 round trip.
To create the ranking, Scott's Cheap Flights did not include deals out of budget airlines like Spirit or Frontier Airlines, or deals that had inconvenient layovers or flights with "illogical routing." They looked at 168 airports in the country and tallied up the total number of deal emails the company sent to members departing from each airport in the last year.
Airports with the highest number of deals per year were ranked the best for affordability and airports with the lowest number of deals were ranked the worst.
The site says factors like the number of airlines that serve an airport and the amount of competition on various routes contribute to the number of deals they can offer.
It also noted that LaGuardia, Seattle, Denver, Baltimore, San Jose, Houston, Reagan National, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, San Diego and Portland all received at least 3-4 deals per week on average.
International flight sputtered to a stop during the COVID-19 pandemic, but international flights out of the United States have slowly resumed. PHL brought back 14 of its international flight routes in May 2021 after they were postponed during the pandemic.
Bloomberg looked at airline flight capacity from the U.S. to more than 30 global destinations and found that certain cities are seeing more travel. Available plane seats to Mexico the week of Aug. 23 are up 34%, and Greece is up 33%, compared to the same time period in 2019.
Most of the cities seeing a pick up in travel are some of the most open destinations for U.S. travelers.
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