Originally Posted by lowfareair

I'll disagree a bit as I think the biggest issue AA has with PHL is that they treat PHL TATL as a monopoly market for nonstops and charge accordingly for PHL-Europe flights, even when XXX-PHL-Europe is hundred cheaper r/t, but EWR is close enough that people will fly out of there when the price is decently better. I've almost never seen better prices out of Philly, and it is often hundreds of dollars more than EWR/JFK.

2 personal examples:

1) I'm doing a Europe trip with 3 others later this year. Been looking at prices the last couple months out of PHL and EWR - I can do nonstops out of EWR on Star Alliance (or AA/BA out of JFK) for ~$600 r/t pp and PHL is ~$1100 r/t. this is generally across several options of European cities to fly into/out of and various dates across a couple months. I'm not looking for the absolute lowest price, but saving $2k in exchange for driving an extra hour each way is difficult to avoid. I have a good number of friends who have done that as well, all with household incomes well into the 6 figures so not exactly needing to get the lowest possible price.

2) I used to work for a company in the Philly area that allowed J to Europe but if it was over $1000 cheaper to fly J out of EWR, they would book that and provide a r/t car service for the staff member. The travel coordinator once told me that about three quarters of Philly-to-Europe bookings went out of EWR, and this was for a company that had over 1,000 Europe trips per year so a pretty good sample size.

AA pretends like Philly is a monopoly market for TATL, but when prices are that much higher, many people, including premium travelers, will suck up the extra 30-90 minute drive to EWR.