Tag teaming with motorcoach provider Landline, the airline began serving the entire U.S. as of Monday.
A Landline bus in Wilmington (Photo: Landline)
American Airlines now serves all 50 states, a title last held by Delta nearly two decades ago. The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier added Wilmington, Delaware, to its route map on Monday.
But getting to and from Wilmington will be an intermodal experience. The airline is partnering with Landline to operate motorcoaches between Delaware’s largest city and American’s Philadelphia hub.
The roughly 30-mile bus ride operates six times per day in each direction. In what is being dubbed a “tarmac-to-tarmac” service, passengers will clear security in Wilmington and arrive in the post-security area at Philadelphia International Airport.
This isn’t the airline’s first partnership with Landline. It also markets bus routes from Philadelphia to Allentown/Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Landline has partnerships in place with other airlines as well, including United, Sun Country, and Air Canada.
“At the end of the day, airlines are passenger transportation systems. There’s no law of physics that says an airline has to operate an airplane. It just comes down to like seats and how much those seats cost to produce, holding a certain level of customer satisfaction constant,” Landline CEO David Sunde told AirlineGeeks during an interview last year.
Due, in part, to the city’s proximity to Philadelphia, Wilmington has seen several changes in air service over the years. Currently, it only has regular air service via a single airline: Avelo.
The ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) offers service to more than a dozen cities and is also one of Avelo’s bases. Frontier also flew to Wilmington at various points between 2013 and 2022 before ending service altogether.
Delta served the city from its Atlanta hub for just over a year beginning in 2006. When the airline axed the route in 2007, the state was left with no commercial flights.
For decades, Delaware has been the only state without regular air service at various points. Most recently, the state lacked service between June 2022 and January 2023.
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