(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: 9 | View All Season 9 Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: April 20, 2025
The Bar's Original Name Was: The Airliner Bar & Grill
The Airliner Neighborhood Diner & Bar Address: 573 E Airline Dr, East Alton, IL 62024
Episode Recap
The Airliner Bar & Grill, AKA The Airliner Neighborhood Diner & Bar, was an East Alton, Illinois (near St. Louis Missouri) bar that was featured on Season 9 of Bar Rescue.
Though the The Airliner East Alton Bar Rescue episode aired in April 2025, the actual filming and visit from Bar Rescue took place before that in July 2024.
It was Season 9 Episode 31 and the episode name was “The Airliner Is Grounded”.
Note – Bar Rescue has featured two bars named “The Airliner”. If you’re looking for the Los Angeles bar, check out my The Airliner Los Angeles update.
In this Easter Sunday episode, Bar Rescue is back in the St. Louis, MO area.
However, this time they’re across the river in Illinois, rather than Missouri proper.
More specifically, they’re in East Alton IL to rescue a bar named The Airliner.
I believe the neighborhood is officially called Rosewood Heights, even though the address uses East Alton.
This is actually the second time that Bar Rescue has rescued a bar called “The Airliner”, as they also rescued one in Los Angeles back in Season 6.
Unfortunately, I have to say “they” and not “Jon Taffer” because Jon is not handling the rescue himself.
Instead, the rescue will be handled by Spike Mendelsohn, who I thought did a pretty good job when he rescued Harbor Lights earlier this season.
The Airliner is a bar with a lot of history in East Alton/Missouri.
It gets its name from being located on Airline Drive in East Alton.
It’s been around for 25+ years and has stayed within the family.
The bar was owned by Richard Tite originally.
Sadly, however, he ended up passing away in 2020 and leaving the bar to his wife Sherry.
Their daughter also manages the bar and figures prominently in the episode.
A lot of locals have also grown up with The Airliner being part of their lives, so it seems to be a pretty established bar in the area.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have turned the bar into a thriving business, as evidenced by it showing up on Bar Rescue.
To get a feel for the bar, Spike sends in two spies – Ava and Savana.
When the spy tries to order a Mojito, the waitress says that the bar can’t handle a Mojito.
Personally, I find it pretty wild that a bar can’t handle such a basic drink.
Instead, the spies end up ordering a margarita and a vodka Sprite.
Next, the spies take a look at the menu…which is absolutely massive.
Like 75-100+ menu items massive. Logistically, that’s going to be hard for any bar/restaurant to manage effectively.
After making it through the entire menu, the spies end up ordering chicken wings and the grilled tilapia.
When the spies taste their drinks, they find them to be very unbalanced.
The food isn’t much better, with the chef serving the chicken wings out of a crockpot.
That’s it for the recap because I’m writing this the day before the episode airs, but I will try to find some time to come back and update later on.
I do know what happened with the bar’s name, though.
Because of the bar’s long history, Spike and the Bar Rescue crew opted to mainly keep the same name.
They did slightly tweak the tagline though.
It changed from “The Airliner: Bar & Grill” to “The Airliner: Neighborhood Diner & Bar”.
I think this makes sense because the bar does have a very “diner” feel to it.
So – was the Airliner East Alton Bar Rescue episode a long-term success?
Keep reading to learn what happened next and if this St. Louis area bar is still open in 2025.
The Airliner Neighborhood Diner & Bar Update - What Happened Next?
Now that I’ve recapped the Airliner episode, let’s talk about how the bar is doing after the Bar Rescue crew left East Alton, Illinois.
As always, I’ll start by looking at whether the bar is still open after the show.
Then, I’ll share some real customer reviews from after the renovation to give you an idea of how things have changed.
Along the way, I’ll also share any other interesting information that I’m able to dig up.
Let’s get into it…
Is The Airliner still open after Bar Rescue?
As of my most recent check, The Airliner is still open and serving customers in East Alton, IL.
As far as I can tell, they’ve kept the signage from the show.
The bar seems to still have a collection of avid regulars, with lots of comments on many of its Facebook posts.
While the bar doesn’t post that often, the posts get a lot of engagement.
For example, a post about the Bar Rescue episode generated 35+ comments and 147+ shares in under 24 hours, which is a lot more than you’ll see from most bars that appear on the show.
Here’s what the bar looks like in the most recent picture from Google Maps street view…
The picture hasn’t been updated since December 2021, so it still shows the old signage.
I’m mainly including it so that you can explore the area around the bar.
The Airliner East Alton reviews after Bar Rescue
Next, let’s take a look at some reviews of the bar so that you can get a feel for what real customers are experiencing.
Overall, the bar has a 4.3 star rating on Google and a 3.8 star rating on Yelp.
However, most of those reviews are from before the bar was rescued by the show.
As always, I try to exclusively look at reviews from after the rescue so that you can get a feel for how the bar has changed after Spike’s visit.
In general, I would say that most of the reviews are positive, with a lot of compliments for the food.
However, it’s not perfect, as there are still some negative reviews mixed in.
Here’s a sampling of a few reviews that I found, all of which were written after Spike rescued the bar…
5 star review from 2025:
5 star review from 2025:
5 star review from 2024:
1 star review from 2025 that mentions the Bar Rescue changes:
Final thoughts on the episode
Overall, The Airliner seems to still be doing ok after the visit from Bar Rescue.
In general, recent reviews seem to be more positive than negative, which is always a good sign.
I hope that things go well for the bar and it’s able to stay open for another 25+ years.
That wraps up my update for The Airliner.
If you want to see some other St. Louis area Bar Rescue episodes, you can check out my updates for Pastimes on 4th / O’Kelleys, City Bistro / The Beechwood, and Crafted / Van Goghz Martini Bar.
Or, if you want to see some other Illinois episodes (most of which are in Chicago), you can read my updates for Clear Bar / Underground Wonder Bar, Blue Frog 22 / The Local, and Press Box / The Dugout.
And if you want to share your thoughts on the bar or the episode, you can do so using the comments section below.
As always – thanks for reading!
More Information
https://www.yelp.com/biz/airliner-bar-and-grill-east-alton-2https://www.facebook.com/@theairlinerbarandgrill/
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Last updated: 2025-05-11 08:19
Daniel Ponsky returns after 8 years. BTW, Spike was featured in Season 1 roughly 14 years ago. He posted something to that effect on his social media.
Spike works way to hard too try to be like Jon. Last time he was on, he kept hugging the (male) owner at the end. I noticed there were no hugs here. No wonder, he spent the whole episode insulting the daughter.
Ashley is one of the least likable workers in the entire bar rescue series… she has constant resting bitch face!