This Colorado Firm Aims to Make Your Next Connecting Flight A Bus

Regional airlines have long profited from affiliating with majors to provide short-haul service from smaller airports to carrier hubs. Teaming with American Airlines and others, the Landline Company figures on doing the same but instead of decanting flyers into a regional jet, it loads them aboard a Prevost Motorcoach.

Starting June 3, Landline will inaugurate flight on-a-bus connecting service for American Airlines from Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) in eastern Pennsylvania and from Atlantic City Airport, New Jersey (ACY) to American’s Philadelphia International (PHL) hub. Rather than flying passengers the 70 miles and 55 miles from ABE and ACY respectively, Landline will drive airline travelers on 35 passenger buses.

In contrast to familiar airport shuttle services, Landline integrates with major carriers in the same fashion that regional airlines do, shooting for a seamless customer experience. The Fort Collins, CO firm blends the branding/look of its airline partners – right down to the bus livery and employee uniforms – with service and reservations airline travelers have come to expect.

“It’s just like connecting to another flight,” Landline CEO and cofounder, David Sunde says.

The experience stretches to online ticket purchases. For example, buyers looking to travel from the Lehigh Valley simply go to American’s reservations site (aa.com) or any online aggregator (Orbitz, Travelocity, etc) and book a flight from Allentown, PA to Los Angeles. An itinerary populates the screen departing ABE with a connection to PHL and on to the destination. A line at the bottom of the screen notes that the ABE-PHL leg is operated by Landline.

The service is essentially an extension of American’s flight routing says Brian Znotins, American’s vice president of network planning. “Customers can start and end their journey at their local airport, relax on a comfortable Landline vehicle, and leave the driving to someone else while they work or start their vacation early.”

Landline already provides fully integrated connections for United Airlines in Denver and Sun Country Airlines in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The company was formed in 2018 with a vision “to build infrastructure to help airlines become multi-modal”, Landline’s CEO explains.

Sunde began his career as an airline network planner thinking about how to maximize profitability with the right plane in the right market. “As the regional airline business changed over the last decade, it became obvious to me that airlines were going to have to start thinking beyond conventional air travel if they wanted to maintain service to small communities.”

The pandemic wiped out such service from Lehigh Valley with American flights to Philadelphia ceasing in 2020. The 15-20 minute flight had become economically less viable as regional airlines replaced their lower cost turboprop fleets with jets. With Covid, American’s affiliate abandoned the route and recent challenges from a pilot shortage particularly affecting regional operators to soaring fuel prices mean it’s likely gone for good.

The loss was felt by ABE’s business travelers, says Thomas R. Stoudt, executive director of the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority. “They asked a lot about the return of that service,” he says. “There’s a large population of legacy US Airways customers in our region who’ve transferred their [airline points] to American and who continue to look for connections on American.”

According to American, members of its AAdvantage loyalty program will also earn miles and loyalty points when traveling on Landline-operated routes.

Sunde, whose company has grown to 100 employees and 20 vehicles says the 45 to 50 minute bus transit from ABE to PHL works on a favorable time scale for airline travelers and at profitable margins for Landline. “We think of ourselves as trying to help extend airline networks beyond the airport. A lot of the time an airplane is not the right tool for those trips.”

Early on, Sunde decided that buses are. The new Prevost motorcoaches Landline uses are consistent with the flying experience from their 34 to 35 inches of seat pitch (average seat pitch in coach class on U.S. carriers is between 30 and 33 inches) to the co-branded safety briefing passengers get which looks just like the one you’d see in an American airliner cabin.

Landline partnered with Sun Country in 2019 and with United in 2021. It also started a pilot door-to-door service with car pickups with Sun Country in Minnesota. A Landline SUV picks the traveler up at home, checking him/her in with the airline, checks baggage, then drops the passengers at terminal where they go direct to a special security lane as their checked bags are automatically transferred to Sun Country’s airplane.

“You arrive right as boarding is starting,” Sunde says. “Once you give an airline the ability to fly somewhere that doesn’t have a runway, you can change the nature of the customer experience and make it door to door.”

It’s a niche that, for the present, the company has all to itself. Sunde says his biggest competition is “you driving yourself to the airport.” Traditional shuttle services, ride-shares and taxi services are indirect competitors but no one else in the U.S. is integrating with airline partners the way Landline is.

Airlines have offered multi-modal services in the past in Europe in select locations. Such services have been absent from America’s airline scene with few exceptions. Lehigh Valley has had a bus-as-flight connection since the mid 1990s. What began as a Continental Airlines service to Newark remains a United Airlines (which merged with Continental in 2010) connection to its Newark hub.

Lehigh’s Stoudt says the airport’s frequent fliers asked about a similar service to Philadelphia before Landline/American announced their deal. From the passenger seat it will look like this;

Travelers arrive at ABE and are dropped off or park as customary. They head for the American counter, check in and check their bags. After proceeding through the TSA line, they head down the departure concourse to their assigned gate where, instead of boarding an airplane, they hop on Landline’s bus. (Regulatory approval for this pending but Sunde says they expect it soon.) Their bags make their way to the bus as they would to a regional jet.

The ride to Philadelphia ensues with passengers already in American’s system, the bus sharing operations data with the airline’s dispatcher. Should the vehicle encounter traffic/delays, passengers are automatically booked on the next available flight from PHL, enjoying all the same protections they would as if the leg were on an aircraft.

“It really does behave in every way like a connecting flight,” Sunde affirms. On their return leaving PHL for ABE, American passengers board the bus again never leaving the secure air-side of the terminal, merely walking to their next gate where the Prevost awaits. Back at ABE, they’re out, into the terminal and on their way home.

Landline’s strategy has attracted noteworthy capital with venture firm, Drive Capital, recently sinking $28 million into the company. The fundraising reportedly brings its capitalization to $38 million.

In addition to enjoying favorable economics (Sunde asserts that even if current fuel prices doubled, it would add just $1.50 per seat to his cost), Landline touts the carbon-friendliness of its service, maintaining that it betters the emissions of a regional flight by 80 or 90 percent.

New markets are in the cards but Sunde won’t hint at what candidates Landline has in mind. The company is also actively watching the emerging UAM scene. He thinks there’s opportunity for his service to build out the connectivity infrastructure that UAM services will need to interface with airlines.

For now, his model works which is something that would-be eVTOL operators have yet to prove. However if one day they do, Sunde quips that he might have to establish a subsidiary called “Airline”.