Flights between PHL and LGA
 

I'm looking at flights from MIA-LGA. There is a flight from MIA-PHL and PHL-LGA that is $90, the same MIA-PHL flight is $160. A MIA/FLL-LGA/JFK direct flight costs around the same. The connection time in PHL would be a little over an hour. Just for fun, I looked at the price of PHL-LGA, and that is twice the price of MIA-LGA with a stop in PHL! Mass transit to where I want to go in north NJ is cheaper from New York City than from Philly, I'd get 500 more miles, and I might see my house from the plane and fly over the Turnpike traffic. All that for the additional cost of $0, and a savings of about $5 on the train ride, but a waste of about 2 hours I would probably spend doing nothing anyway. Plus, if it snows, there's usually less snow in PHL than at LGA.

Moving thread to the FT Mid-Atlantic Forum.
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

The act of deliberately arranging a stop at PHL on the way to LGA is complete madness. The OP said that it was a waste of 2 hours, but it could far, far more than that.

It is customary for the US flights to be as much as two hours late, much of which is spent in discomfort in an overcrowded RJ at the end of the tarmac in the Penalty Box waiting for release permission. Those flights have the lowest priority as they wait and wait for a break in the traffic to NY so they can be allowed in.

Well, I live in NJ between PHL and LGA, so if the PHL-LGA flight was late by over an hour, the train would get me home.

That is easy to say, but if you push back from the gate, ATC might take an hour (or more) before they allow you to take off. Further more delays for a flight like that are generally 15 minutes, then another 15minutes is added, before you know it you are 90 minutes late for the 40 minute flight. So when do you cut your losses?

Complete insanity. I had a place in Central NJ right near the Amtrak station in New Brunswick for nearly 15 years and would never dream of taking an airplane from PHL to LGA in order to take a train to get home.

I would guess that from touchdown at LGA to Penn Station NY by public transpo would be an hour and a half and then another hour plus possible extra railroad headway for the train to get into Middlesex County. Add this to the probable two hour late arrival into LGA and it is clearly an idea that has no rational basis.