LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) -- In some ways, it'll be like any flight at any airport. You'll check in at an American Airlines ticket counter, pass through a TSA security checkpoint, and wait to board.
In some ways, it'll be better: Parking -- short-term, long-term, you name it -- is free. So is Wi-Fi onboard.
In yet another way, it'll be... well... just really different. As in, these flights will never leave the ground -- and they're not supposed to.
These "flights" from Lancaster to Philadelphia will be on buses painted in American Airlines livery and operated by a company called "Landline."
The idea?
"There's significant demand for our passengers that go to various markets" where American flies from Philadelphia, said Ed Foster, Lancaster Airport's director.
So why doesn't American fly -- you know -- an airplane the 59 miles from Lancaster to Philly to provide connections there for people who would rather park and clear security at the small airport?
"The economics just don't work for me to use my aircraft," explained Jason Reisinger, American's managing director of global network planning. (You can also watch our full 7-minute interview with Reisinger below.)
The free parking and Wi-Fi might sound enticing, but the biggest innovation of all might be a low-tech one: the ability to clear security at the small airport and arrive on the bus "behind" security, in airline parlance, at the big hub -- no need to wait in a TSA line there.
On the bus, passengers "can read a book," Reisinger said. "They can do work. And then they make the connection just like they would if they flew into Philadelphia."
And fly where?
"It's not 100 people a day going to one place," Reisinger said. "It's going to be one and two going to a hundred different places" -- places like Orlando, of course, he said, but also "anywhere from Los Angeles to London."
Yes, the big planes Reisinger sends to places like Paris and Tokyo have people who started their journeys on smaller planes in places like Harrisburg and soon buses in places like Lancaster -- which will join Allentown and Atlantic City, where American bus service is launching sooner. How's that going?
"They're booking well," Reisinger said. "They're in line with expectations. They don't start for another month or so, but they're booking up just like like everything else."
The Lancaster "flights" are available for purchase now too. They show up like any other flight on American's website and elsewhere - Expedia, Kayak, and so forth. You can type "Lancaster" or just the airport's code, LNS.
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The bus "flights" don't cost a specific amount of money -- rather, they're bundled as a part of connecting itineraries, just like other flights. A search for American flights to Orlando, returning a week later, returned a round-trip fare of $394 from Lancaster compared to $395 for connecting airline flights from Harrisburg International and $327 for nonstop airline flights from Philadelphia.
But compared to driving to Philly on your own, "you're not driving, you're not paying tolls and you're not paying to park at Lancaster Airport," Foster said.
Sticking with the Orlando example, the total trip -- from the bus departure time until scheduled arrival -- takes about five-and-a-half hours, on average. That includes a scheduled bus trip of about an hour and 45 minutes plus about an hour to connect to at the airport. A Harrisburg-to-Orlando connecting flight itinerary, by contrast, can take as little as about four hours. Nonstop flights from Philadelphia are scheduled to take less than three hours.
In terms of other scheduled air services -- on airplanes with wings -- Southern Airways Express currently flies from Lancaster three times most days to Washington Dulles, two times most days to Pittsburgh and once a week to Nantucket, Massachusetts, according to Diio by Cirium data.
American Airlines sort of served Lancaster until 2007, in the sense that US Airways -- which in 2013 merged with American -- flew from Lancaster to Pittsburgh, where the airline had a large hub.
Here's that 7-minute interview with Jason Reisinger, managing director of global network planning for American Airlines:
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