Philly airport tops 30 million passengers in 2024, its biggest year since before the pandemic

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Philadelphia International Airport has reached a milestone not seen since before the pandemic, and airport leaders believe it’s a sign of even better days ahead.

“In the 2024 calendar year, we had over 30 million passengers fly into or out of PHL and that was almost a 10% increase from the previous year,” said Heather Redfern, the airport’s public affairs manager. Last year also marked the first time since 2019 that the airport had topped 30 million passengers.

The new numbers show that air travel into and out of Philadelphia has fully recovered from the COVID pandemic.

“Anything like this shows our partners whether it be our concessionaires, with Marketplace PHL, with the airlines, anybody that wants to do business at PHL, it shows them people are choosing PHL as their airport of choice,” she said. “People want to come here to fly out of the airport.”

Airport officials also credit the increase to travelers coming to Philadelphia to see WWE’s Wrestlemania event in early April as well as new international flights from American Airlines to Copenhagen, Naples and Nice, France. Summer travelers packed the terminals with more than 9.1 million people flying into or out of PHL between June and August.

With more new flights scheduled for this year, that rising number of passengers is expected to grow even more.

“Aeromexico is coming to Philadelphia for the first time with a daily non-stop service to Mexico City starting in June,” she said. “The FIFA Club World Cup matches are coming, and it’s really the start of everything that’s going to happen for 2026.”

Redfern said increased passenger counts help draw more airlines to town and better vendors to the concourses.