American Airlines bus service will bring Trenton passengers to PHL
The airline’s bus program allows travelers to clear security at their local airport and ride a bus to Philadelphia International Airport for their flight.
American Airlines is expanding service with a new bus route connecting Philadelphia and Trenton.
The airline launched a program a few years ago that allows passengers to clear security at their local airport, board a bus, and be dropped off post-security at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) to catch a flight.
Starting Sept. 22, the service will allow passengers to connect between Trenton-Mercer Airport (TTN) and PHL with three round-trip bus routes a day operated by the Landline Company.
“Since its introduction in June 2022, American Airlines’ Landline service has made it easier for thousands of travelers in the Greater Philadelphia region to fly across the country and around the world from the convenience of PHL,” said Atif Saeed, CEO of Philadelphia’s Department of Aviation, in a statement shared with The Inquirer. “The Landline expansion to Trenton will give thousands more access to 130 destinations worldwide.”
The new service comes as the Trenton Regional Rail line is being threatened by deep cuts to SEPTA service due to the transit authority’s multimillion-dollar deficit.
American’s bus service already connects PHL to Atlantic City International Airport (ACY), Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE), Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (AVP), and Wilmington Airport (ILG).
Travelers can search for flights from Trenton to their final destination and will be shown options to connect via PHL with a bus operated by Landline.
An online search on American Airline’s booking website, for example, shows that a trip from Trenton to Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 7 includes a bus route departing from the Trenton airport at 4:30 p.m. and arriving at PHL at 5:25 p.m. for a 7:25 p.m. flight out of Philadelphia.
Tickets for the new service went on sale Sunday, July 6, according to Nick Johnson, a vice president at Landline.
“In almost every way, except for the fact that it’s not taking off, it is just like a connecting flight,” he said of the bus service.
Landline aims to bring back some service between airports that was once offered on very-short-haul flights but was retired as smaller planes were taken out of service, said Johnson. He added that service was also lost during the pandemic and those short flights don’t make sense economically today.
“We think that Landline is an elegant, and environmentally friendly, and low-cost solution to restore network connectivity to a lot of these short-haul markets that are within [a] one- to three-hour drive of major hubs,” he said.