"The aircraft in question were, indeed, bound for PHL," UPS spokesman Mike Mangeot said in an e-mail.
UPS Flight 218 landed in Philadelphia at 9:13 a.m. UPS Flight 201 landed around the same time, although federal officials would not provide the exact time or say which plane came from Germany and which from France.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a 10-minute ground stop at Philadelphia from 9:51 to 10:01 a.m. Inbound flights were briefly held up, FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac said.
UPS is the world's largest transportation company, and its Philadelphia hub has been a gateway for countless tons of merchandise since it was built in 2005.
Philadelphia is one of four smaller UPS air-freight hubs, along with Ontario, Calif.; Rockford, Ill.; and Hartford, Conn.
United Parcel's 49.7-acre complex at the Philadelphia airport handles 80,000 packages and documents per hour headed to and from 18 states, as far west as California.
The Philadelphia complex includes a 681,000-square-foot sorting facility and a 66,000-square-foot freight facility.
UPS averages 44 daily flights in and out of Philadelphia. Last year, planes landed 1.7 million tons of cargo here, according to the company.
That represents about 57 percent of all freight at Philadelphia International, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said. UPS flights usually arrive between 10 p.m. and midnight and depart between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m., Lupica said.
A small number of UPS flights - about five - arrive at other times, such as the flights Friday from Germany and France, she said.
