Kayak's new flight filter allows you to exclude aircraft models

> they can expand production

This is MUCH, (and I must reiterate) MUCH harder than it sounds.

> using it will provide a very _visible_ signal to the airlines. If they're losing ticket sales

They’re not. And neither is Boeing. If someone using Kayak isn’t willing to contact their elected, they’re irrelevant. (Complaints might register if you’re a frequent flier who books through the airline and gives written feedback. But I haven’t seen evidence of that yet.)

I’m starting to treat general aviation as though it was 50 years ago: Very unsafe and expensive

My expectation is that its going to take a serious accident to get anything to change.

I’m unaware of a highly utilized yet significantly broken system (Tacoma Narrows anyone?) that was able to improve iteratively without catastrophic failure driving improvement (Space Shuttle)

Most human systems don’t seem to have the ability to build fourth order forecasting into system design across all individual and integrated components

The idea of a “factor of safety” seems to be just completely missing in most engineering systems because tolerances mean waste and shareholders won’t allow waste that doesn’t go into their pockets

Planes get swapped out last minute pretty often, its pretty much the only way to avoid full airline meltdowns every time one flight is 60 minutes late to take off. Hell, there was no huge meltdown in the US once the 737 MAX was grounded, twice. They just swap them out, the system knows how to do it efficiently

An evil (but working) way to bypass this once 737s are flying again, would be to put a different plane with similar layout on every flight, then swap to the 737 on the itinerary the day before

Different plane, different seat, is pretty aggressively baked into TOS

> Airbus is already outselling Boeing 2-1.

What's your source? I looked up the quarterly earnings report, and Boeing reports 528 planes delivered in 2023 vs 488 from Airbus.

Just curious to know if you're talking dollar amount or what?

> If they're losing ticket sales because people don't want to fly on a 737, the airlines will find a way to adapt.

Yep, by suing the shit out of Kayak and anyone else doing this.

I sure hope a new competitor pops up. Monopolies are bad.

>the airlines will find a way to adapt

The industry's go-to method here will probably be lawyers and take-down notices to Kayak, before they adapt.

"Alaska Airlines Ad - SNL" - https://youtu.be/IZf0bNDWH4s

This Kayak filter is not new, it's been there for a few years (maybe they added more models, not sure, but you've been able to filter out the MAX planes since the crashes).

True - at least most "737-only" low-cost airlines (Southwest, Ryanair, ...) use the older 737 models and the MAX (which Ryanair has rechristened to "737-8200" because of... reasons) interchangeably AFAIK.

True for individual flights but not on the mass scale. For the masses this will still be useful. And a hit to MAX 8 and other Boeing 737 models in the short and medium run. The aversion will die out eventually for those who can weather the storm (and make some more money by those having other type of planes).

Let me try a sanity check. I fly a lot for work, have eleven tickets booked now. There's nothing stopping the airline in one of those eleven cases.

For five flights, the airline would have a problem swapping out the planes because there's likely only one plane on hand at that airport at that time. For three, I think the population of the country would be quick to disapprove if the airline did it with any frequency. For two, the airline can't very well swap because it's that airline's biggest aircraft and the route is usually nearly full.

From own experience, the latest (in the day) a flight is (especially the short 2-3h flights within EU) the more chances is you will be delayed (if every fight is delayed by 30mins, by the end of the day multiple those 30mins x 4 or 5 or 6).

When a company may see that "oops we are gonna be paying $$$$ for the delays" they will have no fear to bring in another plane (not the one you booked).

The same applies of course for any planes that are damaged, etc.

I tried asking ChatGPT but couldn't give me an answer of the frequency "how often to air companies swap the planes" (I tried with various choices of words) and it couldn't give me a percentage or any other metric.

It's not that there's 'nothing stopping' the airline, it's that under the normal operation of an airline, planes are moved around and rescheduled all the time, up just hours (or sooner!) before the flight.

I would guess something like 0% of assigned tail numbers (not plane model) remain the same a week before booking. Airlines that fly multiple models on the same route would be harder to reassign, but days before the flight if it hasn't sold out, it's still very possible they'll get moved around.

The safest way to not fly a particular model of plane is to not fly with airlines that open them.

This happens very rarely, and is usually of the same family. You replace an Airbus 320 with another airbus, not a boeing. Simply because those airlines don't have both on them in their portfolio.

Now if its specifically to avoid a certain type of Boeing 737 max when the airline already flies boeing, yeah thay might happen indeed.

The only cases of switching families is long haul, like Emirates replaced an Airbus a380 with a 777 once on a trip I took. Still caused massive issues because the boeing is smaller, so they don't like doing this.

It can happen but is it a real problem or just a hypothetical one?

Congratulations, you've found a new insurance niche.

Many airlines, in practice, only fly a particular type or type of planes on a particular route.

Everyone responding saying it doesn’t happen is wrong. It may not happen often to them. I have flown 500,000 miles.

I have family and friends in the industry who pilot, work ground ops, maintenance, and are flight attendants. At an airline with over 300 departures per day things go wrong, crews time out, aircraft have issues on landing that somehow get ignored until morning, and many more examples then planes get swapped.

They generally have very few planes on standby because it’s like flying them empty, it’s an inefficient use of money. It turns into wack a mole quickly and one flight steals a plane, gate, or crew from another until none are left.

Also if enough people start doing this wouldn't the airlines just stop reporting what the plane is.

Or even earlier than at the gate. If you book a flight for 6 months time, there's nothing stoping them changing the allocated aircraft in 3 months.

Solution: Fly an airline that doesn't use Boeing at all. Like JetBlue.

I would say there is basically zero chance that you would be switched to a Boeing last minute with JetBlue.

Of course it makes sense to avoid the 737 MAX. Both at an individual and at a population level.

Someone has to win the lottery and it could be you. The fact that the probability isn't high doesn't matter when you're dying because Boeing wanted to make an extra dollar.

It also makes sense at the population level. It's clear that Congress and the FAA are not capable of overseeing Boeing. And they're too big to even stumble now, never mind fail. The solution is for consumers to punish them. That will get them to fix their problems ASAP.

I’m sure it’s to exclude the MAX but I like it so I can find specific planes I want to fly. The old narrow/wide body filter wasn’t granular enough.

It's the only tool or mechanism available to regular consumers by which they can vote with their wallets. If you're unhappy with how Boeing has been handling their business in recent years, this is the most amount of influence a regular person can exert. Even if your individual risk is miniscule, it serves as a tool to signal discontent.

> I don’t think it makes sense for passengers to worry about the plane model.

Why do you think we should surrender the tiny amount of agency that we still have, in the face of corporate profit-driven deterioration?

For me, this isn't about a measured risk in relation to other known risks in my life (crossing the road, cycling, drinking alcohol). It's about removing a totally unnecessary risk caused by greed and corporate heedlessness.

A similar case: I stopped eating British Beef when a British minister fed his daughter a beefburger[0] to 'prove' it was "totally safe", during the 'Mad Cow Disease' (BSE) crisis in 1990. I wasn't significantly worried about contracting BSE at the time, but the lengths and efforts that the government went to, to convince people to eat more beef for 'patriotic' reasons, when the farmers had fed their cows on ground-up carcasses for economic gain, meant that my boycott was a small but meaningful expression of my own agency when faced by this sort of appalling behavior.

I feel the same way about Boeing, and about the greed of airlines (like RyanAir), that think only about profit and see passenger safety as an irritating distraction that is only important in terms of 'brand perception'.

[0] https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/bse-crisis-john-se...

>I haven’t done the math but conceptually it’s like being paranoid about taking plane A that has a 99.99998 safety vs plane B that has a 99.99999 safety.

That is literally twice as dangerous.

I agree that people are bad with probability like you explain

However, I think the issue with the 737 MAX is that it's been involved in several high profile catastrophic mistakes while only being in service for a few years. It's expected that a page in service for 20 years might have wear and tear that leads to issues... But brand new planes crashing back to back shortly after being released..

The stats on the Wikipedia page state that the MAX has 4 fatalities per 1 million flights, while the prior generation has 0.2 fatalities per million flights [1]. Of course, some if this is due to the two crashes right out the door, and if excluded, perhaps they are similar... But then this new door blowout issue occured... And after investigation multiple planes had the same issue (so it likely is a production issue, not an individual worker screwing up one time).

Overall I agree plane model should mean little to travelers... But the MAX is trying very hard to prove it's a lemon.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX

Not only that but the crew is much more informed and qualified to make a decision and it's their life on the line as well.

There will always be incidents no matter how rare, investigations will always show that the something could have been done better because nothing can be done perfect, the press will always inflame the public and the public will want to have an opinion/decision no matter how out uninformed.

I think being unreasonably pissed about certain things is good because it provides some randomness/wildcard behavior for those who enjoy modeling the masses behavior for profit, and think making mistakes is only about the numbers. Some things should have a high cost just because.

> People are bad at conceptualising low probabilities.

Speaking of which - the probabilities are exactly the same for passengers as cabin crew and there is no compounding effect :p

Number of times you roll the dicey has no effect on probabilities and thus no impact on whether make sense.

I’m not doing this often this can swallow more risk is very human thinking

If people want to exercise choice - by all means, and I’m happy at the margin to punish Boeing, but I agree from a personal risk standpoint it’s probably inconsequential.

I’m always amazed at where people spend energy mitigating risk, I had a coworker who was worried about taking the Covid vaccine but was hardly the picture of health and rode a motorcycle to work many days - it’s like putting down the beer, eating a salad, and taking the bus will give you massive gains in life expectancy vs some minor unknown delta with the Covid vaccine, but to each their own. I just wish we could get people to use micromorts (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort)

I don't care as much about the immediate risks as I care about punishing Boeing for their management culture -- and I don't care about the model as much as the Airbus/Boeing tilt of the carrier I'm booking with.

This does mean that this utility isn't really that useful, though, and its simpler to just book with e.g. Delta over Alaska.

Your "plane A" number is off by an order of magnitude. The "plane B" number is about right.

Now you will certainly find it interesting to look at the safety profile of your other activities. And estimate repeating those risks through your life. That order of magnitude makes all the difference in the world.

I think about plane models when it comes to comfort. I always prefer A350s over 787s, always prefer A320s over the 737 family because of the 737 family's more narrow cabin. I genuinely don't like flying on Boeing planes.

An alternative use case: on a long flight I would prefer to fly on a 787 or A350 as these composite aircraft maintain higher cabin humidity and pressure which is easier on the body.

I am not concerned about safety, but I am concerned about seating layout. Some airlines, particularly United and American, use incredibly tight seat configurations that are a bridge too far for most other airlines. Getting stuck on those particular planes have been among my worst flight experiences. Now I just try to avoid those carriers, but all I really want are to avoid those seat configurations.

In general, the more consumer knowledge the better. You may not know why I care and you may not think it matters, but how about just letting me decide anyway? I think the same goes for food labelling, country of origin, labor conditions and so on. We allow companies an insane degree of secrecy.

"If it's a Boeing, I'm not going."

I already look for these planes and will schedule my itinerary around avoiding them.

Comparing the 737 max (all variants) to nearly any other passenger transport shows that it is safe and we are seeing why in real time. An issue happened which correctly caused immediate grounding and inspections followed by an in-depth review and likely corrective action both to the issue and the practices that created it. Implying it isn't safe is continuing to feed a false narrative that encourages unreasonable fear of flying and is holding aviation back.

> The only viable solution is an independent safety board (paid for out of Boeing profits) that supervises every aspect of design and production at Boeing and its contractors until Boeing learns how to build safe airplanes again.

At this point I’d go further than that. Their ability to manufacture and sell aircraft should be at stake. This needs to be an existential threat for Boeing to take it seriously.

> It's going to be very difficult to avoid the 737 MAX going forward.

Maybe. Delta doesn't currently have any 737 max and they have ordered 100 max 10s, but they aren't approved by the FAA yet and they might change their order. There are still airlines that prefer airbus.

great way to get a nice close up view of the mountains when flying Vancouver, BC to Seattle, though!

I feel like the Embraer 175 and 195 and the little Fokker jets can compete for that title.

If this is true, it's the most interesting thing I've learned from this thread.

No one assumes that Airbus doesn't have mechanical issues, but lets not overlook the next paragraph you decided not to quote for some reason:

"Through 2015, the Airbus A320 family has experienced 0.12 fatal hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs, and 0.26 total hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs; one of the lowest fatality rates of any airliner".

We can't ignore that Boeing has been having a particularly bad few years that are not normal mechanical problems but boiling down to neglectance.

Yes. I do. It's a small risk but one that I can trivially avoid. It takes seconds. Why not?

And as you said. Force them to clean their act up.

The risk is low, but voting with your wallet is the only tool available to regular people. If you're unhappy with how Boeing has been handling their business, what other actions are available to you?

What's the downside for you? If you don't care just ignore it.

Having the option, even if rarely used, is a good signal to bean counters that cutting corners on safety or quality or even leg room is unacceptable.

People don't make these choices based on probability, it come down to whether you see as worth your time and money to think about it.

That's the same for buying a super sturdy SUV for commuting. Your overall chances of getting into an accident where you'll be crushed between two semi is astronomically low, but many people will still choose that option over just a normally safe car.

The question comes down yo how much they'd bare disruption to assert that choice, and it doesn't look to me like a costly or super problematic choice here

Yes, they do but only for a finite amount of time and most will board the plane because realistically they “don’t have any other choice” given their timeframe ( going home for Christmas, attending a meeting in the morning, etc ). However long term they internalize ( rightfully ) Boeing equals bad and danger. If an airline comes up and announces all their fleet is now all brand new Airbus people notice and prefer that, airlines know that and if the numbers are close they’ll run Airbus. However.. aircraft buying and operation is an incredible complex world, history and politics are a huge factor too, safety is not a factor, “risk” is, they overlap but are not really the same. Most of this will go away in a month or two, until the next plane goes down.

I have a pilot friend who told me he wont fly (even as a passenger) on any Max. He flies Boeing 737s.

I’m not sure a pilot who has never flown the type is really any better positioned to judge this than anyone else, but I do think that if he feels that way, a whole lot of non-pilots do too. If you know pilots you know they are not a cautious lot generally. While they get a metric shit-ton of caution trained into them, there are a whole lot of cowboys in the flying world.

Pretty much every airline I've ever seen provides the aircraft type right in the flight list view. The reason they don't let you filter by it is because aircraft types can change before the actual flight so it would be an odd feature to provide given there is zero guarantee you will get that aircraft.

So yeah but I think the experience might play a difference, going down from 10000 mt is a different dying experience from being hit by a car and don’t live through anything

Sure, but avoiding that risk is inconvenient, whereas going for a 737-800 or A320 over a 737 Max may be no effort at all depending on the flight (this sort of thing is really bad news for Ryanair if it catches on, say; Ryanair's most important routes are typically of the 20-flight-a-day variety and there's lots of competition who don't have Maxes).

Hum, no. The safety track of that plane specifically is bad enough that you are not automatically correct.

statistically (from a certain perspective) i agree with you but cold statistics dont explain the reality of existing as a human being. there's something about flying in a thin, aluminum/composite tube with 100-300 other "souls" many miles in the sky that many find extremely uncomfortable. the magnitude and scale seem to be perceived differently by the human psyche.

additionally, once we dive deeper into the statistics, it may be worth evaluating deaths, critical injuries, and minor injuries dimenions by different measures (per transport, per capita, per accident/incident). i wonder what story those analyses would tell.

lately Im amused by this because I actually got into a car accident on my way to airport (was in an uber/lyft that got rear ended on a highway) So for trips to and from the airport, they have been more dangerous for me lol.

And this is what I do:

Pick a taxi that won't speed or make dangerous merges.

Pick a taxi with working seat belts.

Pick a taxi that uses a modern car for modern safety features.

When available, take the train.

Don't take a helicopter to the airport.

This is like saying you shouldn't wear helmets while bicycling because you're more likely to die on your commute to work anyways.

I don't think airlines will do that, because having at least two (more would be of course better) competing manufacturers in the market is better for them, so they have to hope that Boeing survives even if they don't currently use their planes...

The recent 737 Max issue doesn't seem particularly aircraft specific. If the QA and culture have gotten that bad then it could happen to 787 just as easily.

I doubt however this will ever move the needle in terms of passenger numbers. Even for those people who are aware of the issues, a tiny minority of them would pay more to avoid a particular aircraft model.

Except during the pre-flight safety presentation, the airlines generally don't want you thinking about safety at all. Simply advertising that they don't have a particular incident prone aircraft in their fleet makes customers think about all the things that could go wrong. A press release highlighting that they don't have that particular aircraft in their fleet during the news cycle of an incident should be sufficient enough.

I don’t think they would go for that. Airlines do not want customer to think about the possibility of a crash at all.

>>Or no Boeing planes at all?

That will never happen, the federal government would never allow it, and they have many avenues to ensure it

1. All Future bailouts of Airlines could be contingent on them buying Boeing Aircraft

2. Direct Bail out of Boeing to make them the most inexpensive plane to buy

3. Regulation to prevent advertisement of aircraft type

4. Increase import tariffs or other protectionism to make Airbus and other manufacturers more expensive

Boeing is a national defense contractor and it too important to our national interests to be allowed to fail, if the 4 things I listed above do not happen something else will will prevent Boeing from Going under, or even losing market share.

Both Boeing and Airbus planes have had mechanical issues, and I don’t think it’s in any airline’s interest to start slinging shit about passenger safety.

Ryan air exclusively uses 737 and as far as I know they only had 2 incidents, one being a fake bomb threat and the other (bird strikes) proving the plane was safe

It's (by far) the largest airline in Europe and the third largest in the world in term of passengers per year, I don't see them going anywhere because of the 737 max issues

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ryanair_accidents_and...

That’s almost 25% savings rather than 10%.

It's a good idea to check both.

But in my experience it's far more often the opposite -- the airline sells tickets at the highest price to people who visit its site because they're less likely to be "shopping around". Already have more loyalty to the airline etc. Business travelers that buy directly. Etc.

While if there's a difference, the aggregator usually is the one selling for less, because people are comparing by price. Especially certain "discount" aggregators.

Also you may not have been comparing exactly the same ticket -- e.g. the more expensive Kayak seat might be fully refundable while the airline one isn't. But maybe not -- maybe you did just get lucky!

I had thought Kayak was a metasearch product and searched airline sites on your behalf, but maybe that's changed in significant time since I was involved in online travel.

Either way, search how you like, but you'll almost always get better exception service if you are booked directly with the service provider than if you're booked as a 3rd party customer or a code share. For airfare, costs are usually similar or even a little less expensive if you book directly; for hotels, there are times where the prices are significantly different, but you may be able to get the hotel to match prices if you call them to book directly.

Exceptions would be if you have a high value relationship with a corporate travel agent, or maybe a high level amex?

If you book through an online travel agent and something goes wrong, chances are the provider will send you to the travel agent's customer support and they will be slow and may not be able to do much, because they don't have the right access.

Trains usually don't crash because the manufacturer isn't able to build them properly

Kayak can arrange your car, hotel, etc. Google only does flights.

Unfortunately, an elevated number of groundings can indicate two different things: A cautious, proactive regulator and good safety culture, or a more reactive/lenient regulator and a plane so unsafe, they were finally forced to act.

Proxy measures about things passengers consider “bad” are probably more useful than groundings alone. Compute some score based on things like:

1) Number of passenger fatalities as a result of a mechanical failure of the aircraft.

2) Number of passenger items ejected from the aircraft during flight.

Me IRL

Some people also find certain models more comfortable for longer flights. To the degree I look at the plane model (and seating) that's why I care.

lol. i'm looking for a flight on the Tu-104 please.

Listen… I don’t want to avoid Boeing because I think it’s going to crash on me. I want to avoid Boeing because as a consumer I want to inflict maximum economic pain on a company that prioritizes profits over safety.

Ah enlighten us with your broad wisdom. It wasn't Airbus that had multiple problems in the past because of multiple missing bolts in doors, rudders etc., or complete failures of planes out of greed

But have you thought about the shareholders when they need to spend money on QA instead of share buybacks?

This was said on aviation forums after the whole MCAS situation, with the grounding and the checks.

Yet here we are due to a door that just flown out.

I mean, I assume the passengers of Ethiopian flight 302 would have an opinion on this.

This is valid assumption when talking about particular airlines and their maintenance model, yet not good when talking about bad design.