American Airlines will connect Philadelphia by bus
American Airlines is about to start moving people en masse as usual but at much much lower altitudes than normal. The world’s biggest airline in fleet size announced yesterday April 7 that they will be offering bus connections between Philadelphia and a big array of regional airports located in the vicinity of the former capital of the United States.
The concept is interesting but nonetheless not surprising at all since it’s been done by a few other airplanes before. American Airlines says their ground transportation service or “Transportation Service Landline” as they call it, will provide transportation by bus from and to the airports of Allentown/Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania; and Atlantic City, New Jersey.
-
More great content from Transponder1200: JetBlue makes massive offer to buy Spirit Airlines
There are several reasons behind this decision by the mega airline. First, airlines worldwide, but especially airlines in the United States are suffering a severe pilot shortage that got worse with the onset of the pandemic and it’s not going away anytime soon. Secondly, we have the soaring oil prices all over the world which have caused airlines to readjust their itineraries and cancel flights both because of the price of Jet A and the shortage of the fuel in several airports in the USA.
The new ground services offered by American Airlines work as follows: the passengers land in Philadelphia and have a bus connection, will deplane, go to the terminal and look for the departing gate of their designated Bus. Passengers on their way to Philadelphia will arrive at the airport and go through security as usual, then they should find and board their bus which will take them to Philadelphia.
As we mentioned before, this is far from a new idea. United Airlines has been offering the service for over a year now. They are connecting passengers in the same fashion who need to travel to Denver and would have to otherwise take a very short and ultimately pointless flight to the mega hub. Time will tell if passengers in Philadelphia warm up to the concept, but if we can use Denver as an example, we can expect for it to be a success.