Hacker News Reader

Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

On twitter I would get non-stop ads from Boeing pitching their military hardware. I don't understand this, I'm not exactly in the market for buying $1 billion military airplanes and missiles. I've never seen a single ad pitching the quality of their civilian aircraft.

The economics of the situation do mean most passengers won't have a choice in this. Unless airlines cancel their 737MAX orders and continue to run their older 737 NGs for longer while they wait for a new Boeing aircraft or to get A320s at the back of a very looong queue of Airbus orders.

Otherwise that queue of 5,000 or so 737 MAXs is going somewhere. If there's real fear of flying on them then 737 MAX flights will be cheaper and A320/757/etc. flights will be more expensive. Price sensitive flyers will have to choose between flying and not flying.

View on HN

> I don't understand this, I'm not exactly in the market for buying $1 billion military airplanes and missiles.

Where do you live? You're probably a voter in an area that Boeing needs a helping hand in Congress.

If OP is on a work VPN by way of northern Virginia, that might explain it.

I always love how surreal it is to ride the metro through the Pentagon station. Anywhere else, the ads are perfectly normal. But at that station? Adverts for tanks and fighter jets.

I get the same thing walking through San Francisco - ads for Cisco routers and "Network Security Solutions" obviously aimed solely at executives.

I had this when the F-35 was in the final stage of the aircraft renewals competition for the Belgian Air Component. I let you guess where I live...

I haven't seen a single ads since the decision has been made.

You're not the market YET. Let's talk after a few more ads :-D

> If there's real fear of flying on them then 737 MAX flights will be cheaper and A320/757/etc. flights will be more expensive

Have you noticed how when you buy the ticket there's no mention of the plane you'll actually fly in and no guarantee that it won't be swapped 45 minutes before takeoff?

I'm saying that looking from a different perspective. As a tall person I would rather fly in planes I know to have better leg room or where I can pick an emergency exit seat. So many times the plane was changed just before boarding and my "emergency exit seat" turned into a regular cramped one because of the different seating arrangement.

So I'll be skeptic of the fact that the market can actually support tickets prices based on the plane model. Unless an airline guarantees the plane model you book your flight on or exclusively uses a specific model then pricing based on the plane used is about as achievable as pricing based on the revision of circuit breakers used in the cockpit.

> Have you noticed how when you buy the ticket there's no mention of the plane

I haven't noticed that.

I can't recall ever booking a ticket on a carrier where the [scheduled] plane type wasn't readily available to me before purchasing. Typically looking at the seat map or details of the flight will show you the type (and sub-type). I wouldn't buy a ticket on a site that didn't preview that information.

I just checked the major legacy US carriers and Delta and United show it in either the Details or Seats fold-outs. American shows it directly on the schedule. For non-legacy carriers, Southwest only flies 737s [and doesn't assign seats], but shows the specific revision in a fold-out when you click the flight number. JetBlue shows it without the need for a click (as American above). If you care about the in-flight experience at all, you surely shouldn't fly Spirit, but they show it as well in the seat map.

For aggregators/OTAs, Expedia shows it in the details fold-out, Kayak in the flight fold-out, Google Flights in the results fold-out, ITA Matrix same.

I tried and couldn't find a way to book a flight where I couldn't readily see the scheduled aircraft. There's no guarantee that your aircraft won't be switched out for operational necessity, but in that event I'm sure you could decline the switch and book on another flight if you had an operational, safety, convenience, or other concern with the switch.

How do you book tickets where you don't and can't see the aircraft model before booking?

Any airline reserves the right to swap the plane model and reassign your seat with no notice at all.

That also goes for Asian and European carriers, which usually have a much higher service level than US carriers.

Source: My own experience being assigned a seat on a Bombardier C100 (Airbus 220 now), which was swapped for an Airbus A320 with Swiss. This happened about three times and the moment you learn about it is at the gate.

Exactly happened to me over this Easter - normal jet airbus swapped for some slower turboprop one (the one with long blades sticking out).

Normally I wouldn't care so much, engines weren't that noisy, but the effin' plane was much much slower, meaning huge delay, missed train and forced sleepover in a place I really didn't want to spend any time.

No warning or announcement whatsoever. Not even apology from crew for massive delay (Austrian airlines)

Yes, those terms are right in the airline tariff/conditions of carriage.

Let me be a bit more explicit although I don't understand why people skip the relevant details just to make a point. When you buy the ticket no airline I ever used (anecdote) shows a visible mention of "you'll be flying Boeing 737MAX" which may ring some alarms. You see "flight number LH2053" (random example). You can investigate and see that it's usually flown by Airbus A321s, you may even dig into the details of your purchase before committing (something 99% of customers never will because they are relatively hidden and not at all obvious unless you're looking for them). And then you run into the next issue I mentioned: The difference between "readily available" and "guaranteed" is pretty big.

I have been on just under 500 flights in my life. As an estimation I'd say that at least 50 of those ended up with a plane change right at the gate (no idea about the reasons - maybe technical issues; but mostly they were downsized so perhaps it's about capacity). In my case this meant for example that row 12 was no longer the emergency exit but right behind it which made me more likely to remember the occurrence.

If flying the MAX actually influenced the ticket price you can bet this would become standard practice. Since the airline does not guarantee anything there's no obligation from their side. Can you honestly tell me the price would actually be influenced in such a way?

If by investigate you mean "click on the seat map", sure I agree that you could investigate and dig into the details.

> I don't understand why people skip the relevant details just to make a point.

You were the one who said you had a body type that made you more prone than most to want to choose a specific seat (as do I). I took that to mean that you were more prone than most to use the seat map before purchasing, making it all the more unusual to think that you'd not been shown an aircraft model prior to booking previously.

You've had extraordinarily bad luck given that 10% of your flights had equipment changes at the gate. That's a level of chaos for airline operations that is unheard of in the industry.

I don't think the 737-MAX is going to suffer from negative margins because customers will be afraid of it. I flew yesterday and will fly again on Monday. I'd get in and would put my family on a US-carrier 737-MAX right now, without any software or hardware fixes in place. (Yes, Boeing made errors here. I also don't think that an AA, Southwest, or Alaska crew would have crashed the second one.)

> you mean "click on the seat map"

The seat map is presented at check-in, after you buy the ticket.

But you can see the plane model also before purchase by googling the flight number or by digging into the flight details on the purchase page. Both are things that most passengers won't do.

And in the end you're still at the mercy of the company which can decide to change the plane at any time until the boarding starts.

> That's a level of chaos for airline operations that is unheard of in the industry

I seriously doubt it. They happened with most major European airlines. Unless the implication is that EU airlines provide a much lower level of service then at most we can attribute it to bad luck.

> The seat map is presented at check-in, after you buy the ticket.

How do you usually buy tickets? I am offered a seat map before booking on every carrier I checked (except Southwest who doesn't issue seat assignment).

It's different in Europe I guess. As far back as I can remember you buy the ticket whenever and check-in at the counter or online 24h before the flight to pick a seat.

But this won't help even when the airline gives you information about the plane used (not buried in menus, not hidden by services they try to sell you, etc.) if on the day of the flight they switch. And if the price is indeed dragged down by the choice of plane then you can bet the info will disappear completely and/or plane switching will happen as a rule, not an exception. Can you honestly underestimate an airline's willingness to squeeze money from passengers?

Delta specifically tells you the plane before you purchase. It's literally right there when you go to pick your seat, it doesn't require any digging whatsoever. As others have said, on a full service airline where you can pick seats ahead of time they obviously know what they're planning on flying because they give you the seat map.

> Have you noticed how when you buy the ticket there's no mention of the plane you'll actually fly in

Yes you can. The scheduled aircraft type and seat layout is in the scheduling system and you can see it on any system I've used, up front before selecting the flight. (You wouldn't be able to pick your seat if it wasn't.)

Go to Kayak for example, punch in one way PDX to PWM for May 1st, pick one of the non-spam flights that show up (i.e. a listing from a real airline). Click to expand the details and it'll list the flight number and airplane for each leg, it'll look something like:

> American Airlines 658 · Narrow-body jet · Airbus A321-100/200

> American Airlines 6032 · Narrow-body jet · Embraer 175

> Delta 2974 · Narrow-body jet · Boeing 737-900

The same applies through the actual airline's booking system (and you're usually advised to book directly through the airline's website after finding your best flight option on a tool like Kayak).

> and no guarantee that it won't be swapped 45 minutes before takeoff?

This is true, but anecdotally it's happened to me only rarely due to a mechanical failures or some other reason.

Every time I've bought tickets it has shown me what plane I'll be flying in for each leg of the trip, and so far they've never switched planes on me either. Sample size is ~10.

There are airlines that have an Airbus only fleet, easyJet for example.

"Airbus only" fleet in easyJet's case means Airbus A319-100, Airbus A320-200, Airbus A320neo, and Airbus A321neo.

A Boeing only fleet could have 737NG and 737MAX. This doesn't help if you are completely against flying in the MAX.

I think the point was that youre guaranteed to not fly in the MAX if you go with an airline with an airbus only fleet

Good point. But then you wouldn't really avoid "737MAX" you'd be avoiding "Boeing". If the price increase theory is correct then you'd end up paying a lot more since you restrict the options of planes a lot more.

Google Flights shows the make and model of the plane. Sometimes the actual airline webpage doesn't though so I use the info from Google to check seatguru since the airlines usually have pretty terrible seat selection charts.

The ads are there so you buy stock in Boeing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com