Originally Posted by
dwcatty
Anyone done this yet? Thinking of booking a "flight" into and out of ACY and wondering about the TSA procedure. I know they say you go through in ACY - is this in fact how it worked, and not in PHL? Appreciate hearing anyone's experience.
Yes! We did this on 6/22. As of right now, there is no TSA implemented -- YET.
I did, by chance, speak with the ACY airport director earlier this month. There is still no real fixed timeline for when this arrangement will be completed. He has heard everything from a few weeks to a few months, but perhaps about a month. I would guess by the end of the summer? It's surprising how much in the dark the airline and airport are.
Even without TSA, the service is great. Here is a bit of a rambling brain dump of the experience:
Airport displays show the "flight" with a gate as "CURB" right now, next to a bunch of Spirit flights departing to more exotic locations, such as Puerto Rico.
On check in, you get a seat assignment, even though there is no real seat map you can select from. I was even able to pull up the "flight" in FlightStats, complete with runway departure times and arrival times. THEY EVEN LOADED THE BUS NUMBER IN AS THE TAIL NUMBER. I nearly lost it when i was scrolling through this. American takes this bus VERY seriously.
You check your bags at an American ticket counter. They even have a dedicated premium line. A bit overkill right now since we had 9 pax on our bus. They even gave me a printed ticket for boarding. We also threw them an entire loop because we had a lap child and they absolutely had no idea what to do. Maybe some kinks to work out? What was hilarious is that there were at least 1-2 pax who thought it was an actual plan, and dismayed/upset it was a bus. I kid you not. As if they would be flying some plane 50 miles to Philly.
Once you check your bags (and YES -- there is a bag cut off) you hang out in the ticketing area (there's seating by the bar). Eventually an American motor coach pulls up and they announce the "flight" from Philadelphia has arrived and will be departing shortly back to Philadelphia. You follow one of the ticket agents out to the bus. I counted about 12 people departing the bus and arriving into ACY.
Up until the last minute, they had no idea if we were going to gate check (not a joke) the car seat and hold the infant in our lap or not. They put a gate check tag on the carseat. Like really? Did it really need one if it couldn't go on the bus? The car seat did buckle in just fine.
The bus features reclining leather seats, tray tables, in seat power (AC and USB), as well as a video display system above that was showing some default player. There is a lav in the back. There does appear to be a place in the back where catering can be stowed, but there were no inflight drinks. There is no FA.
They DID have a safety announcement, indicating where the exits were, first aid kit, etc.
It was a great start to the trip, which ended up to be a disaster as we were stuck on the plane for 6 hours due to a ground stop. We did, eventually, make it to our DFW destination.