Imagine booking a flight on a travel site and deciding to treat yourself and upgrade your seat to top quality, only to seek out out you are not flying in any respect, you are taking a bus. Apparently, this can be a very real possibility for those who’re booking flights with American Airlines, Air Canada, or Sun Country Airlines, as all of those airlines are partnered with The Landline Company. United was once a Landline Company partner, however it terminated the last of its bus routes in July last 12 months.
The Landline Company is a weird name for an airline, right? That is since it’s a bus line that operates “luxury buses” which are sold as flights with flight numbers and still require you to undergo airport TSA, but involve taking a bus to different relatively nearby airports for connections, or to some destinations. At once the one North American airports that The Landline Company services are Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Toronto, Canada. When you book a flight that involves travel to a small city surrounding any of those major airports, you would possibly end up boarding a bus as an alternative of a plane.
The Washington Post interviewed several individuals who shared social media videos of their experience taking one among these “flights,” without realizing that a bus ride was the flight. The first miscommunication appears to be attributable to folks using third-party booking sites that do not show the wonderful print clearly.
Booking travel through third-party or corporate travel sites seems to cause confusion
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 as an alternative of a jet. She said, “it wasn’t until we were on the highway that I spotted that is my ride to O’Hare, there is not any plane. It took me a second for it to essentially lock in that this shouldn’t be a plane ride.”
American Airlines told the Post that it has been running these “flights” since 2022, and that the overwhelming majority of Landline service customers are using it for connecting flights, as there aren’t any routes which are served each by bus and by planes. The part that will really make me indignant is how the bus ride is repeatedly known as and treated as a flight. The rides get a flight number, they depart from the airport, the e-mail confirmations ask if customers wish to upgrade to top quality, and members earn miles, however it’s a bus, not a plane.
When booking a flight, look out for the kind 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 company travel booking sites may not show the identical information.
In line with the Post, “The buses make Philadelphia connections to and from five smaller airports in Pennsylvania, Latest Jersey and Delaware and, as of October, Chicago O’Hare connections to and from Rockford, Illinois, and South Bend.” Among the travelers interviewed were annoyed by and completely caught off-guard by the bus rides, while others enjoyed the bus ride. All I do know is that I’ll be scrutinizing every future flight I book a bit bit closer now, because I do not fit well on motor coaches.
This Article First Appeared At www.jalopnik.com
