A woman was left baffled as she was waiting for her next flight at the airport, only to realise a different form of transportation would be used for the travel journey.

Travelling can be a long, stressful, and exhausting experience, especially if you have one or more connecting flights to catch on your journey. Because of this, knowing exactly what to expect can sometimes bring some comfort, such as knowing where to go, or knowing how long each of your flights are.

So when one flyer named Alex was travelling from Pennsylvania to Colorado in the US for her wedding, she was baffled to learn that one of her flights actually wasn’t a flight at all, despite having been booked through American Airlines.

The woman soon took to TikTok to share the unexpected surprise of her journey, which caused over two million people to get just as confused as her, as many believed planes were the only vehicles travelling out of airports.

“POV: “When your American Airlines ‘flight’ is actually a bus,” she wrote at the start of the video.

The video showed Alex zooming in on the screen at the gate, which showed the travel journey to Trenton, New Jersey, would take about an hour and 10 minutes. She then continued to film the moment she walked out of the gate to get to the plane, which ended up not being an aircraft at all, but instead a bus.

In the caption, she went on to explain there was a plane image on her boarding ticket, making her even more confused when she got through the gate and spotted the bus that waited to take the passengers from Philadelphia to Trento, New Jersey, where Alex’s next flight awaited.

She explained in a follow-up video she lives in upstate New York and typically departs from Scranton, Pennsylvania, out of convenience. So when the time came to travel to her friend’s wedding in Colorado, she decided to stick to her routine – Alex used Google Flights to book a flight from there to the Colorado by going through Philadelphia.

As she got to their airport, she went through security and arrived at her gate, noting the flight board showed her American Airlines flight number and an airplane icon, and travellers boarded according to their group numbers. It wasn’t until it came time for Alex to board she noticed something was different.

“I look at a woman nearby, and I say, ‘Do you know how long this flight is?’” the traveller said. “And she says, ‘Do you mean the bus?’”

People quickly took to the comment section to share their bewilderment as many wondered how this was possible.

“Going through TSA for a bus that’s insane,” one person commented, while a second viewer said: “I’d demand a refund to be honest.”

A third person wondered: “Someone explain to me how this happens – you book through American AIRlines and it doesn’t tell you on the website you are taking a bus?”

“NGL, a bus at an airport that really wants to grow up and be an Airplane sounds like a decent premise to a Pixar movie,” another viewer said.

Some also wondered why Alex was flying between Philadelphia and Trenton, as the two locations are just 30 miles apart. To this, Alex replied: “You’re 100% right, but this was one of three flights (the others actually were planes) so I didn’t even look at the duration of each individual one, just the full day.”

On its website, American Airlines notes that it’s partners with the Landline Company, a motor coach service which connects Philadelphia Airport with regional flights hubs in New Jersey, Philadelphia and Delaware.

American Airlines has been contacted for comment.