Long-Term Parking Options Philly Airport
 

Any tips on long-term (2 weeks) parking at the Philadelphia Airport, on- or off-site?

I would look into all the hotels' "stay and park " plans. For the price a hotel room many times you get up to two weeks' free parking.

We use Winner's off-site parking service.

We use Colonial parking. I just returned from a 15 day trip and it was $120 including the $1/day discount coupon you can print off the internet (actually I'd lost it so the guy gave me the discount anyway). We parked at about 4 am on a Sunday and got a shuttle immediately and we came back about 12:30 am on a Monday (after the blizzard) and my car was cleaned off, although I had to gun it out of the drift.

I use parksleepfly all the time, but at OHare. I'm sure you can get the same sort of hotel/free parking/free airport shuttle at Phillie.

PHL is my home airport, and my experience (lots of flying getaways of various lengths) is that the $120 cost for two weeks parking is about as good as you're going to find -- including stay and park plans. Since two cab rides between center city and PHL would be about half that, you may want to also look at how much it would cost to get to center city and back. Or the cost of renting a car between your starting point city and the airport, and then back.

There are MANY parking options for PHL airport. Both Winner and Pacifico will take you to the airport and pick you up in your own car. The others use shuttles to get you to the airport.
Just google Philadelphia airport parking and you will see your options.

We always used the economy parking at the airport until our last trip. Didn't see a reason to change until they raised the rates again ($11?).

Since we were going to be gone over 2 weeks, we looked into off-site places, and settled on Colonial Parking (mentioned above). We were happy withe the service, and will use them in the future.

~Liz

Thanks for the replies.

One more to add, we've always used Pre-Flight and it's always been a good experience. The shuttle has never been more than 2 minutes in coming right to our car. It's a little under $8 a day. But I agree with PaulRabe, if you have a way to get to somewhere where you can take a cab or train to the airport, that would likely be your most inexpensive option.

Thanks for all that. Does anyone know whether the 20% parking tax is collected at the on-airport parking? The off-site parking sites disclose this, but the airport website and the Philadelphia Parking Authority website don't mention it.

> 20% parking tax is collected at the on-airport parking?

I presume you're asking whether the cost of "on-site" long-term parking (OSLTP) is 20% higher than their listed rates. The answer is that it doesn't matter. I've parked at both OSLTP and at private lots near the airport. Because the former (1) are not immediately accessible when you get to PHL airport, (2) are so full that you spend a lot of time just finding an available space, and (3) have buses that are slow, make frequent stops, and don't run very often; the amount of time between getting near PHL and getting to your gate is about the same for both types of parking. The private lots are further away, but you can get to one as soon as you get near PHL*, open spaces are found more quickly, and their vans are both right there when you drop off your car AND travel much faster. Thus, there's no advantage to staying at OSLTP. Since the price of OSLTP even without tax is higher than the price with tax at private lots, the latter are your better choice between the two.

For a time away of two weeks, however, I still recommend you not park your car near the airport.

* Note that some private lots may be further from your starting point than is PHL. If time between getting near PHL and getting to your gate is of the essence, choose a private lot that is on the same side of PHL as the route you are taking to PHL. In my case, for example, I stopped using Colonial because (for me) it required an extra fifteen minutes of driving to get there. If I lived south of PHL (along I-95 direction), I'd actually prefer using Colonial. It's a fine company, but I don't like cutting it close.