Philadelphia Terminal A immigration wait times: what to expect
U.S. Customs and Border Protection publishes how long arriving international passengers waited at each passport control hall, hour by hour. Over the last 26 days it recorded 131,181 arrivals at Philadelphia Terminal A, who waited 7 minutes on average. The longest single wait reported in that time was 80 minutes.
Flights landing around 2 PM have met the longest lines (8 minutes on average), and those around noon the shortest (5 minutes). If you have a connection, allow for the busier figure.
| Arrival time | Average wait |
|---|---|
| Midday (noon–4 PM) | 6 min |
| Evening (4–8 PM) | 7 min |
Passenger-weighted average over the last 26 days of CBP records.
Global Entry and Mobile Passport Control holders usually skip most of this line. CBP reports the figures a day or two after the flights land, so these show the usual pattern rather than the line at this moment.
Where these numbers come from
Immigration figures are CBP's own airport wait-time records, collected daily. Security checkpoint waits, on the other tab, come from the airports' live feeds. Both archives are free to download as an open dataset. About this site.