Kennedy Woodard-Jones checked in for her flight home from a work trip 24 hours in advance earlier this month. Her emailed reminder from American Airlines referenced her “flight to Chicago O’Hare,” for which she had chosen a seat. She went through the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint as usual.
Woodard-Jones, an engineer, lined up at the gate in South Bend, Indiana, and that’s when things got confusing. A bus sat outside, with workers loading bags underneath. She figured the bus would take them to the plane. But the American Airlines-branded motor coach rolled down the tarmac and off airport property.
“It wasn’t until we were on the highway that I realized this is my ride to O’Hare,” said Woodard-Jones, 27. “There’s no plane. It took me a second for it to really lock in that this is not a plane ride.”
when you buy a flight from American Airlines but they board you on to a bus on the tarmac so you think they’re driving you to the plane but they just start driving to the destination
#traveltok #americanairlines
Woodard-Jones had found herself traveling via a fairly recent development in regional transportation. The Landline Company, founded in 2018, operates routes via bus for three airlines from small communities to larger hubs that might have once been served with the type of small planes that have fallen out of use.
American said the vast majority of Landline service customers are using it for connecting flights. 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. No routes are served by both bus and American Airlines planes, the airline said.
Travelers book the bus ride — which gets a flight number — just like they would a flight. American’s website notes that the route is “operated by The Landline Company as American Eagle” and “includes travel on luxury bus,” and it shows a bus icon during booking. But some travelers, especially those who reserve on third-party booking sites or corporate tools, have said the bus travel portion of their trip was not obvious.
“Since service launch, American has transparently displayed during the booking process on aa.com any services operated in partnership with Landline,” the airline said in a statement. “We’re always listening to customer feedback and are engaged with our partners to examine opportunities to better display Landline-operated segments on third-party displays.”
Woodard-Jones, who shot video as she was “slightly panicking” in the early part of her trip, turned it into a TikTok that has gotten more than 13 million views. She’s since added several joking follow-ups (how does one put a phone on “bus mode”?), as well as a 10-minute video answering questions that came up in her comments.
She said she booked the trip through a work tool and did not see any mention of a bus. Her outbound trip to South Bend was a flight on another airline.
When Shawnte’s Crossley booked an October flight from Detroit to Atlantic City last year for an annual girls’ trip with her mom and sister, she didn’t realize Philadelphia would be a strange place for a layover. She’d never been to either city and had no idea how close they were to each other.
She also had no inkling the Philly-Atlantic City leg was on a bus. She thought, “Oh, this is different,” when she spotted the bus, thinking it was a shuttle to the plane. Workers laughed when she asked how they would get to the plane, which she also found odd.
Let this be your reminder to read the small print!!!! #atlanticcity #busride #americanairlines #roadtrip #philly
Once on the bus, she was concerned they were spending so much time on wheels, worried they would miss the flight. Then a woman behind her on the bus said: “I literally just found out that this is the flight,” recalled Crossley, 30, a social worker.
She said that when she booked the round-trip flight, the bus of it all was not apparent to her. She even got an email confirmation asking whether they wanted to upgrade to first class.
“We’re upgrading to first class on a bus?” she said. She provided The Washington Post with a screenshot of one communication from American after she booked that said the flight was “operated by The Landline Company as American Eagle,” a regional carrier, and referred to the aircraft type as “bus.” But she wasn’t aware of Landline, or that any bus service existed that could be booked through an airline.
In a TikTok, she wrote, “Let this be your reminder to read the small print!!!!”
Patrick Keogan, 49, actually meant to book first class for a trip to Las Vegas that started in South Bend near his home in Elkhart, Indiana, and connected through Chicago earlier this month. He booked through a third-party online travel site.
“I’m just looking at the broad strokes of what’s the total price and total time,” said Keogan, who owns a roofing company. He said he missed any language about the bus ride operated by Landline and only realized what was happening when he walked out to board.
“Five in the morning, I’m expecting to get on a plane,” he said. His first-class purchase allowed him to board first.
In a post on X, he tagged American and asked how it was legal to sell a first-class flight that involved an hours-long bus ride. “What a JOKE,” he wrote, adding in a follow-up: “How small was that fine print???”
In an interview, he described the mix-up as “a Larry David-type of moment.” And he admitted there was some humor in it. In the future, he said he would probably just drive himself to O’Hare.
“American does a nice job when a plane’s involved,” he said. “I just don’t want to ride a bus.”
When she was booking a trip to Colorado for a friend’s wedding last year through Google Flights, Alex Opie paid the most attention to the start time from Scranton, Pennsylvania, the airport closest to her Central New York home, and arrival time at the final destination in Denver. It never crossed her mind that ground transportation could be part of the equation.
So when she asked a woman in the boarding line how long the flight was, and the woman said, “Do you mean the bus?,” she was bewildered. Opie, 35, who works for a nonprofit organization, said she texted her friends throughout the 2½-hour drive.
“You guys are never going to believe this,” she told them. She also took the bus on the trip home. Since then, she’s served as an expert for friends who are booking travel.
“A friend of mine just sent me last week a screenshot of hers and was like, ‘Am I on a bus?’” Opie said. She weighed in: “I really don’t think so.”
David Sunde, founder and CEO of the Landline Company, said its goal with its airline partners is to “expand American airport infrastructure to be closer to where you live.” The service has made connections possible where consistent regional air service is no longer available, he said.
Landline works with American, Air Canada and the low-cost Sun Country Airlines. Most people who opt for the service would have otherwise been driving the leg they spend on a bus, Sunde said, and then potentially paying for airport parking.
“We’re saving them time and money, and we’re giving them a really awesome product experience on the way,” he said. American describes the ride as a “premium motor coach experience.”
“For customers, this service operates just like a flight would. Customers earn their AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points on eligible fares, check their baggage and enjoy the trip with complimentary Wi-Fi and power at every seat,” American said in a statement.
Sunde said people are sometimes caught unaware, though he believes the airlines do a good job of clearly explaining the service. Sometimes, however, travelers don’t look at the equipment type or see the other language about Landline and a bus. But he said the end result is often positive.
“If they didn’t know, they’re very pleasantly surprised,” he said. “In the communities where we operate, people generally get to know us quickly.”
Krista Moats, who lives outside South Bend, was indeed pleasantly surprised in October when she found herself on the just-launched bus service to O’Hare. Using a work tool, she had booked a business trip that would connect in Chicago and continue to New York, and paid the most attention to the time she would arrive.
She was prepared for a short regional flight that would leave her with a headache ahead of her longer flight to New York. Instead, she found herself on a bus enjoying a comfier seat for napping.
“It was super nice … really super clean, very comfortable,” said Moats, 39, who works in higher education. She posted a couple of videos on TikTok about the experience, saying she would purposely book it in the future.
“I’ve recommended it to people and they’ve done it,” she said. “It really is a nice service.”
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