You Could Book A First-Class Airline Ticket That Turns Out To Be On A Bus Instead Of A Plane

Imagine booking a flight on a travel site and deciding to treat yourself and upgrade your seat to first class, only to find out you're not flying at all, you're taking a bus. Apparently, this is a very real possibility if you're booking flights with American Airlines, Air Canada, or Sun Country Airlines, as all of these airlines are partnered with The Landline Company. United used to be a Landline Company partner, but it terminated the last of its bus routes in July last year.

The Landline Company is a weird name for an airline, right? That's because it's a bus line that operates "luxury buses" that are sold as flights with flight numbers and still require you to go through airport TSA, but involve taking a bus to different relatively nearby airports for connections, or to some destinations. Right now the only North American airports that The Landline Company services are Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Toronto, Canada. If you book a flight that involves travel to a small city surrounding any of these major airports, you might find yourself boarding a bus instead of a plane. 

The Washington Post interviewed several people who shared social media videos of their experience taking one of these "flights," without realizing that a bus ride was the flight. The primary miscommunication appears to be caused by folks using third-party booking sites that don't show the fine print clearly.

A video posted on TikTok by 27-year-old Kennedy Woodard-Jones went viral, with over 13.4 million views as of this writing. She told the Post that when it was time for her flight to board at South Bend International Airport in Indiana, she ended up boarding an American Airlines-branded motor coach instead of a jet. She said, "it wasn't until we were on the highway that I realized this is my ride to O'Hare, there's no plane. It took me a second for it to really lock in that this is not a plane ride."

American Airlines told the Post that it has been running these "flights" since 2022, and that the vast majority of Landline service customers are using it for connecting flights, as there are no routes that are served both by bus and by planes. The part that would really make me angry is how the bus ride is continuously referred to as and treated as a flight. The rides get a flight number, they depart from the airport, the email confirmations ask if customers want to upgrade to first class, and members earn miles, but it's a bus, not a plane.

When booking a flight, look out for the type of aircraft and the operating airline. American Airlines flights that include a bus route are "operated by The Landline Company as American Eagle" and "includes travel on luxury bus." It also shows a bus icon during booking, but only on the American Airlines website — third-party sites and corporate travel booking sites may not show the same information.

According to the Post, "The buses make Philadelphia connections to and from five smaller airports in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware and, as of October, Chicago O'Hare connections to and from Rockford, Illinois, and South Bend." Some of the travelers interviewed were annoyed by and entirely caught off-guard by the bus rides, while others enjoyed the bus ride. All I know is that I'm going to be scrutinizing every future flight I book a little bit closer now, because I don't fit well on motor coaches.