American Airlines Adds Landline Motorcoach Links to Chicago O'Hare from South Bend and Rockford

American Airlines announced on 22 July 2025 that it would connect two Midwest airports to its Chicago O'Hare hub by road rather than by air. Under a partnership with Landline, passengers starting their journeys at South Bend International Airport in Indiana and Chicago Rockford International Airport in Illinois would ride a motorcoach to O'Hare and connect to American's network there, on a single ticket.

The South Bend service was scheduled to begin on 6 October 2025 with four round trips a day. Rockford was to follow on 20 October 2025 with five daily round trips. Both were on sale through aa.com and the American app.

How the service works

Landline's model is designed to make a bus segment behave like a connecting flight. Passengers book through American with the smaller airport as their origin and:

• check bags at South Bend or Rockford, with luggage transferred through to their final destination;
• clear TSA security screening at the departure airport;
• are driven to O'Hare and dropped airside, so there is no second security check or bag recheck before the onward flight;
• earn AAdvantage miles on the journey.

The coaches seat 35 passengers in a two-by-one layout with leather seats, free Wi-Fi and in-seat power.

Ben Humphrey, American's vice president of operations at O'Hare, said the airline was always looking for new ways to serve customers and that the option would give more Midwesterners access to American's network from the hub.

The airports and the distances involved

Rockford lies about 70 miles north-west of Chicago, and South Bend about 84 miles east of O'Hare in a straight line, though the drive is longer and often slowed by traffic around the city. Both airports are close enough to O'Hare that a flight spends much of its time taxiing and climbing, which makes the economics of short regional jet sectors difficult. A road link allowed American to sell connections from both markets without dedicating aircraft and crews to them.

Both airports already had ground options to O'Hare that did not involve American. Rockford travellers had long been served by Coach USA's Van Galder bus service, while South Bend has the South Shore Line commuter railway to downtown Chicago and United Airlines flights to O'Hare. The Landline offer differed by putting passengers through security at home and delivering them airside with their bags checked through.

American at O'Hare

The bus links formed part of a wider rebuilding of American's Chicago operation. In February 2025 the airline said it would operate up to 480 daily departures from O'Hare that summer, 22 per cent more than a year earlier, serving around 150 destinations. Feeding passengers from nearby smaller cities into that schedule supports connecting traffic, particularly on international routes.

Landline's track record

Landline had worked with several airlines before the Chicago announcement. American began using it at Philadelphia in June 2022, linking its hub with Allentown/Bethlehem and Atlantic City. It added Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and Wilmington, Delaware, in 2024, and Trenton-Mercer in New Jersey was due to join in September 2025. United Airlines had used Landline from Denver and Newark but was ending its last two routes, Fort Collins to Denver and Allentown to Newark, in mid-2025. Sun Country had earlier run Landline services from Minneapolis-St Paul.

For American, Chicago was the first expansion of the model beyond Philadelphia.

What has happened since

Both Chicago services launched as planned in October 2025, but they were short-lived. In August 2026 American said it would end Landline operations at O'Hare, with the last buses running on 4 October 2026.

• South Bend: American replaced the bus with three daily American Eagle regional jet flights to O'Hare from early October 2026, returning to a route it had not flown for more than two decades. United already competes on the same sector.
• Rockford: no replacement service was announced. Around 1,100 customers held bookings beyond the cut-off date. Rockford's airport director said the service had been starting to perform well after a slow start, and that the airport's priority remained attracting scheduled flights. Van Galder added daily trips to O'Hare and offered free tickets to affected American customers.
• Philadelphia: Landline continues to operate American's connections from Philadelphia to Allentown/Bethlehem, Atlantic City, Trenton-Mercer, Wilmington and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.