Kennedy Woodard-Jones bought a plane ticket from American Airlines, went through TSA, lined up at her gate, and didn’t realize she was boarding a bus until it was on the highway. Her TikTok about it got 13 million views, according to the Washington Post.
American sells tickets with real flight numbers for routes operated by the Landline Company, a bus service connecting smaller airports — South Bend, Scranton, and others — to major hubs like O’Hare and Philadelphia. The tickets show up in booking systems as American Eagle flights. On American’s own site, a small bus icon and the note “operated by The Landline Company” appear in the fine print, but passengers who book through third-party sites often never see it.

