Trenton-Mercer Airport — Local services in Ewing Township

Neither bar nor airport lounge nor restaurant. This place looks like a snack bar in a bus station. It is poorly laid out, and service to the traveler is bush league at best. It is located in an inconvenient part of the airport at the top of steep stairs. The room in which it is housed seems to be part bar, part sit-down restaurant, and part standard departure lounge. These areas are poorly defined. In the "bar" area, there is no outside food allowed. This is certainly understandable for a restaurant, but there is no sign posted to let you know which part of this establishment you are in. Likewise, alcohol is not permitted in the "departure lounge" area, but no signage exists to define this area. Last week, I committed the cardinal sin of carrying a glass of beer over to sit in a comfortable chair whilst checking my email and having a sandwich I had with me. Immediately a member of the bar staff came to me and loudly and publicly shamed me for sitting outside the bar, and for bringing outside food into a restaurant. They were rude and treated me as if I were stupid for not knowing somehow that I had exited the "beer legal" part of the lounge. I would capitulate to ignorance in the matter, but the same thing happened two minutes later to another gentleman who took a mixed drink over to the same area where I was, to sit comfortably with his friends who chose not to drink, and received the same rude and thoughtless treatment. It is no fault of mine, nor of this other man, that this establishment cannot be bothered to sign the areas of their bar correctly. A simple sign reading "No Alcohol Beyond This Point" on one side, and "No Outside Food Beyond This Point" would eliminate all the confusion, and relieve the staff from having to berate people for something that is not their fault. To top it off, this place is outside security, and my airline requires you to be at the gate an hour before flight time, so unless you have enough time to sit there, order a meal, endure their tortoise-like service, and still report to security 60 minutes prior, it is pretty useless to enter this place. Nobody connects at Trenton, and if they did, they would not exit security and climb up to the top of the airport for this place. All things considered, I would actually advise showing up at TTN exactly one hour before your flight and going straight through security. For the first time in 40 years of air travel, I would rather have had a sandwich and a drink on the airplane than spend another second in this place. Needless to say, they lost at least two customers that day, and I will go hungry and thirsty rather than endure their...

I love the Trenton-Mercer and Frontier Airlines experience. The airport is very small and accessible, easy to reach, without the long treks from parking to ticket counter to gate. Going through security took about three minutes, as I walked straight to the conveyor belt.

I used Trenton Airport to leave the New York area and go to Fort Lauderdale in early March, the day of the snowstorm that paralyzed the Northeast and caused cancellations and a plane to skid of LGA's runway. At Trenton, we took off on time after a brief de-icing of the plane, and I wondered how long we would have sat there if the de-icing were taking place at a busy airport. Both my flights -- to and from Trenton -- were on time and pleasant.

It's worth it to figure out how to play the low-cost airline game; if you want to make this work, you just have to follow a few guidelines:

Trenton-Mercer will save you money, if you're used to paying big for long-term parking at LaGuardia or JFK. Long-term parking is only 8.00 a day, as opposed to paying $78.00 for the first 48 hours at LGA or JFK. When you check in online the night before, purchase one of the front-row seats on the plane for an extra $25.00. It's worth it for the extra legroom, and the fact that you'll be the first one on the plane, the first to get beverage service, and the first one off the plane -- just grab your bag and go. Print your boarding pass at home, bring it with you. Don't forget. Buy your checked baggage rate at home, too. It's cheaper than when you get to the airport. And it's cheaper to check your bags than to carry them on. If you're flying with a second person who has a checked bag, check them under separate names, because a person's second bag will cost more. MEASURE your free carry-on personal item, to make sure it's within the size restriction, or else you'll have to pay handsomely at the airport, and stand in a long line. Get to the airport well in advance. The ticket counter opens up 2 hours before the scheduled flight, so get there by then. You'll avoid standing in line behind plenty of people who are arguing about bag size, the fact that they have to pay for a carry on, and anything else. Go to the store and pick up a lunch bag's worth of your favorite gourmet snacks to have on the plane. That's one of my favorite tips and it makes the flight that much nicer. Trenton-Mercer doesn't have much more in the way of amenities besides a little bar, so bring yourself a snack for the airport, too. Bring earphones for the...

Not sure whether to give it three or four stars. Pluses: it's a small airport: you don't have to go very far from the curb to the gate. You exit the curb, stand in line, get the bags checked, walk to the OTHER side of the terminal with the bags (lol), drop them off, go downstairs, go through security, and you're right at the gate. The airport has two gates in the terminal, technically; both might as well be interchangeable. Also, because of the low frequency of flights, you're not going to get stuck too long with the plane waiting in line on the tarmac. If the parking lots aren't too full, there's a chance you might be able to park your car and walk right up to the terminal. Another plus: you can walk upstairs and look at the planes boarding and disembarking.

Minuses: it's a small airport. Perhaps a little too small. When a flight is boarding and disembarking, the terminal tends to get crowded, particularly on the lower two floors. There's one bar/restaurant upstairs and that's it. People have to drag their luggage from the check-in desks across the terminal to where the conveyer belt actually is (and in the process walk in front of the self ticketing stands, the staircases, the ground-floor restrooms, and the rental car desk). Picking up your checked luggage after the flight means walking outside to a trailer where the luggage carousel is. Boarding the flight also means walking outside to a ramp (which might be a plus or a minus). When the terminal isn't crowded for a flight, it's rather empty, and there's not all that much to do at the airport. There are picnic benches outside.

When the main parking lots are full, an overflow lot comes in play, but it's all the way in the back of the airport. That means having to take a shuttle bus, which is a fun little ride due to the curving roads wrapping around the airport. One can see small private aircraft from the shuttle bus, as well as forests and fields.

Transit service is hard to come by, though. (NJ Transit did plant a bus stop in front of the main terminal and parking lots, but I don't know if it's in use yet. Your best bet might be to take a taxi or Uber.)

Many of the flights from this airport go to Florida and a few other places in the American South (such...