Our East Coast hubs
Philadelphia & Charlotte
We’ve successfully established Philadelphia as an International hub. We already connect to 19 destinations in Europe and just this year, we added seasonal service to Athens and year-round service to Brussels, Zurich and Dublin starting in the fall. If anything, our expansion demonstrates the demand for stronger International travel out of Philadelphia.
Together with the city of Philadelphia, we’re working on improving the Philadelphia airport itself. We’ve invested millions of dollars to refurbish our terminal, including purchasing new ground equipment, installing an improved baggage sorting system, hiring customer service and management staff and renovating the gate and lounge areas. We’ve also expanded our Envoy Lounge, a comfortable waiting area for passengers flying in Envoy, our International business class.
Philadelphia’s central location among major East Coast cities – including Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. – makes it a convenient gateway for passengers traveling both domestically and internationally. With over one-third of all U.S.-China passengers flying from the Eastern U.S., nonstop service from Philadelphia makes a lot of sense.
Location is just one of the reasons Philadelphia works for International travel. Here’s a snapshot of what makes Philadelphia a smart choice for an International gateway:
- As the fifth largest metropolitan area in the U.S., Philadelphia ranks just behind the San Francisco and Washington D.C. regions, both of which enjoy nonstop service to Beijing
- The Philadelphia region has the fourth highest GDP among major U.S. cities and generates more jobs than all but five other metropolitan areas in the entire country
- Philadelphia also ranks fourth in the nation in high-tech jobs – after only New York, Washington, and Los Angeles – each of which has nonstop China service
- Median income in Philadelphia is also fifth in the nation, and the region is among the top six in the percent of population with advanced degrees
We believe that Philadelphia is a natural choice for nonstop service to Beijing and our service would bring the first nonstop flights to China from Philadelphia. With our proposed service, we’d open a world of competitive choices for millions of customers, especially in the busy East Coast region.
Our service would also include a connecting flight from Charlotte, our other East Coast hub, bringing access to China to an even larger number of passengers. We’d use wide-body aircraft between Charlotte and Philadelphia as well as between Philadelphia and Beijing to make shipping cargo simple.
Together, service from Philadelphia and Charlotte will provide the foundation to our future expansion into Asia, making us more competitive and giving our passengers more choices and more destinations.
