Does Mayor Parker have a secret project to build Philly the cleanest, greenest, big-city airport bathrooms in the country?
The lavatories at Philadelphia International do seem to have been on her mind lately.
During her recent speech to some 2,000 people at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Parker was talking about tourism and the big events coming in 2026 (the FIFA World Cup, the MLB All-Star Game) when she went off-script and fervently vowed to do something — it’s unclear what — about the washrooms over at PHL.
“Visitors from across the globe, as they arrive at our welcome, at our world class Philadelphia International Airport — and I want to tell you, I won’t stop, I’m like a dog on a ball, those bathrooms are going to get better at the airport, and I’m on it,” she said, to applause and some laughter.
We’re all for improving public toilet facilities whenever possible, but we had to wonder, is this a thing? Is it common knowledge that the stalls at Terminal B are in dire need of an overhaul? And what is Parker planning, exactly?
Tens of millions for new johns
It turns out the airport already has been getting new bathrooms — for more than a decade.
The city-owned PHL is about 12 years into a 16-year, $175 million program to rebuild all 48 sets of its facilities — each of which include one men’s room, one women’s room, and a companion care room — and build two new ones, said Heather Redfern, a spokesperson with the city’s Department of Aviation.
The fifth of eight phases is currently under construction, and the program has been accelerated to finish all the work by 2028, she said.
The newest phase is funded in part with a $39 million Federal Aviation Administration grant. A groundbreaking for that work drew a host of dignitaries to the airport last fall, including U.S. Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon and Dwight Evans and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, who praised the benefits to the traveling public and the economic boost for the region and for workers employed in the long-running project.
The most recent rehab wrapped just last month in Terminal A-West, with amenities like a companion care room, a relief area for service animals, lactation suites, artwork and a number of sustainability features.
A “rough” first impression
At the same time, frequent flyers say that, overall, the facilities at our world class aviation facility are a mixed bag.
The newest bathrooms are pretty nice, they say. “Some gates like the new American Airlines are spectacularly clean and fun,” one person wrote on Reddit, in response to a Billy Penn request for travelers’ observations.
Many others are basically fine. Some need a little sprucing up — “held together with a bit of string and tape, but perfectly serviceable,” in one traveler’s words.
And a few, in the baggage claim area, are “horrendous,” as two other airport users put it.
That’s because those particular facilities are easily accessible to anyone who walks into the building, including unhoused people who camp out in the stalls, ask people for money, create a mess and generally make users uncomfortable, they said.
“As long as I’ve been at the airport, there’s been a homeless problem there,” said one longtime aviation worker, who’s on the job market and asked that his name not be published. “Those bathrooms are rough.”
“Especially if you’re arriving from somewhere and you are not from Philadelphia or familiar with that airport — you know, Ma and Pa Kettle come in from Des Moines, and that’s their first impression? That’s kind of rough.”
Everyone’s got a favorite
For people who travel through PHL often, the conditions and quirks of its various bathrooms are a subject of considerable interest.
Fishtown resident Alex Dagenhart said he was recently on a ski lift in Lake Tahoe, on the California-Nevada border, discussing airport washrooms generally — “it came up organically,” he recalls — when he and his seatmate realized they were both from Philly. “I was like, well, what’s your favorite bathroom?”
His lift partner’s preferred facility was right outside of Terminal C. Dagenhart is a traveling administrator for skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, and he flies through PHL three to four times a month, so he knew what the man was talking about.
“As you’re passing through the exit on airport security, there’s a bathroom to the right there. It’s pretty freshly remodeled, and always smells pretty nice. But it’s very busy — there’s a lot of comings in and comings out,” he said.
Not so with his favorite bathrooms, in Terminal F. They could use a little fixing up, he said, but they’re only lightly used.
“I always love flying through F terminal, because I prefer their bathrooms early in the morning,” he said. “You kind of have to know where it is, because it’s not obvious. There’s no signs there at the terminal that I can recall that say there’s a bathroom, like, way off on the left side.”
He doesn’t know all of PHL’s bathrooms well. For example, he said he couldn’t really comment on those in Terminal A-East, which the longtime aviation employee said were in bad shape. “I don’t fly international a whole lot,” Dagenhart said. “I’d love to go international, but, you know, time.”
A Sisyphean task
Like other frequent fliers, though, Dagenhart does know about those notorious baggage claim bathrooms, with their broken towel and soap dispensers and urinaceous odor, he said.
He recently had a flight that landed at Terminal C early one morning and “honestly, I’ve never seen so many houseless people within a baggage claim area,” he said. “I’m not trying to complain about it too much, but, I mean, five panhandlers was a little bit much for me at six o’clock after a red-eye.”
Others were more direct. The bathrooms in baggage claim are “an embarrassment,” one person wrote on Reddit, in response to a Billy Penn call-out.
“We had family visit recently, and the first thing they said when we picked them up was how horrible the bathrooms in baggage claim were,” another commenter said.
Throughout the airport, “the bathrooms themselves are fine,” wrote one traveler, who said they were a member of AAdvantage Executive Platinum, American Airlines’ top-tier frequent flyer status. “PHL’s ability to keep things clean … is a different problem.”
The airport administration is aware of the issue.
“PHL has… faced challenges recruiting and retaining workers — especially frontline custodial and facilities maintenance workers,” Redfern said. “We are addressing this issue by contracting with a cleaning service for the baggage claims and areas near security checkpoints and expanding coverage to address restroom conditions.”
The airport has also launched new recruitment marketing campaigns and held hiring blitz events, which recently produced 33 custodial recruits in early February, she said.
Could that effort to beef up cleaning in the baggage claim areas be the fix that Mayor Parker said she’s pursuing so tenaciously? It’s unclear; her office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Some travelers did say there were other problem areas, at least from their perspective. One AAdvantage Platinum Pro member on Reddit insisted the women’s rooms at PHL are always “filthy,” even the new ones, so she pays for Admirals Club lounge access.
The longtime aviation employee noted that the airport is basically built on a “swamp,” which he thinks affects the plumbing and other systems. In some areas, like Terminal A-East, the bathrooms are also extremely busy.
“You walk in and the smell hits you. Those bathrooms in particular are just a problem spot. They’re constantly in use, so it’s hard to keep up,” he said.
“I don’t say that to disparage the folks that work in facilities there, because they have a difficult job,” he added. “They’re visible and they are working hard. It’s just an impossible task to accomplish.”
