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American Airlines will sell you a $1,000 bus ride. It just hopes you don’t buy it.

The trip from Wilmington to Philadelphia shows up like a flight, costs 50 times more than Greyhound, and is apparently priced to scare you off.

(USE AS DESIRED) An American Airlines motorcoach operated by Landline travels on the Atlantic City Expressway Thursday, July 13, 2023. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced it has issued a short term security program amendment to assess the security effectiveness of an industry-first program transporting by bus screened passengers, their carry-on items and their checked baggage from the secured area of Atlantic City International Airport into the secured area of Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). The program enables travelers from Atlantic City International Airport (ACY) to be screened by TSA and be transported by bus directly to a gate inside Philadelphia International Airport’s (PHL) secure area to catch a flight to their destination without being rescreened at Philadelphia.
(USE AS DESIRED) An American Airlines motorcoach operated by Landline travels on the Atlantic City Expressway Thursday, July 13, 2023. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced it has issued a short term security program amendment to assess the security effectiveness of an industry-first program transporting by bus screened passengers, their carry-on items and their checked baggage from the secured area of Atlantic City International Airport into the secured area of Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). The program enables travelers from Atlantic City International Airport (ACY) to be screened by TSA and be transported by bus directly to a gate inside Philadelphia International Airport’s (PHL) secure area to catch a flight to their destination without being rescreened at Philadelphia.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

If you want to travel round-trip from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Delaware, it’s going to cost you. $1,000, to be exact. You also won’t be on an airplane in the sky. You’ll be on a bus on I-95.

Confused? You’re not alone. Last week, a Bluesky user pointed out that American Airlines was selling roundtrip tickets between ILG and PHL for about $1,000. The option appeared in search results for flights between the two airports, even though it was not a flight at all. It was a bus ride. And while a standard round-trip ticket on a Greyhound bus costs $20, this one, operated by a company called Landline, costs 50 times that.

Why so expensive? Because American Airlines doesn’t actually want people buying that ticket on its own. The Wilmington-to-Philadelphia route is meant to function as one leg of a longer trip, not as a standalone ride. It is operated by Landline, a company that partners with airlines to bring travelers from smaller cities to major hub airports without using short regional flights. In the Philadelphia area, that means passengers can check in and clear security at regional airports like Wilmington, Atlantic City, Trenton, Allentown, and Scranton, then board buses that take them straight to Concourse F at Philadelphia International Airport to catch a connecting flight.

Landline CEO David Sunde said the service isn’t designed for people who simply want to travel between Wilmington and Philadelphia, and most people aren’t using it that way. But because, according to American Airlines, a technical limitation prevents the company from fully removing standalone Landline tickets from search results, those trips still appear as a purchase option. American prices them high to discourage people from buying them. In other words, the $1,000 fare is less a real offer than a giant digital Do Not Touch sign.

Unfortunately, not everyone gets the message. Social media is full of stories from people who booked standalone Landline tickets thinking they were flights. Last month, a woman went viral on TikTok for posting a video of her “flight” from South Bend, Indiana, to Chicago, writing, “when you buy a flight from American Airlines but they board you on to a bus on the tarmac.”

Part of the confusion appears to stem from how closely the bus rides resemble flights in search results, especially on third-party booking sites. While buses and flights are easier to tell apart on American’s website, the overall layouts are still similar. That is actually by design.

“The goal here is to make the purchasing experience just like buying any other connecting flight,” Sunde said. “To fully integrate it into the American Airlines connecting experience, it has to start with the purchase and the digital side, which is why they appear like flights.”

Sunde acknowledges that the $1,000 bus fare between ILG and PHL looks strange, but “encourages people to check out what happens when they book a flight from Wilmington to anywhere else but Philadelphia.”

Book a trip from Wilmington to London, for example, and the Landline ride to Philadelphia is simply folded into the itinerary, with the cost included in the total fare of $1,054. Make Philadelphia the final destination, though, and American Airlines will still sell you a $1,000 bus ride. It would just rather you didn’t buy it.