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Comment by abofh | Hacker News Reader

I have a pair of cross-atlantic flights coming up - I absolutely did choose "not Boeing" when ticketing my flight.

I have also been doing this. Usually paying a premium for it to be honest. Mostly because of the delays or cancellations that are happening (or could) on Boeing airlines due to lack of new planes, and 'recalls'.

It's also nice to support European manufacturing but I wouldn't actually pay for that.

737 MAX isn't used on cross-atlantic flights, is it?

More worried about the Southwest/Alaska fleet than anything cross-atlantic.

I guess it depends on whether you don't trust the 737 MAX or Boeing entirely...

Would the MAX lines be used on trans-atlantic flights? (I mostly fly mostly seen more Dreamliners and triple-7's)

Yes. East coast to Western Europe. The MAX 8 has nearly enough range to do JFK to Madrid nonstop.

https://simpleflying.com/icelandair-boeing-737-max-routes/

Yes, especially on East coast to north-western parts of Europe

In my experience they are rarely used, unless you are stopping over in Ireland or Iceland.

You're gonna be fine on a 777, it's shorter flights to be more careful of

I'd rather lose the door on a short flight than on a transatlantic flight, though...

Is it written/enforceable somewhere?

Not enforceable on the platforms I used to check for a family member this weekend (Google, Flighthub, and directly on two airlines sites). But they do all specify the model in "flight details" which was usually a pop-up.

But I'm sure it must be on someone's backlog

Kayak can search by plane type

ITA Matrix as well.

Which can change minutes before boarding. You’d have to fly a non-alliance airline with single-type fleet like JetBlue or Southwest, and even then, a cancellation could pop you on another airline.

I don’t understand what that has to do with the original request. Planes don’t typically change at the last minute.

Planes change at the last minute often. Searching by type on Kayak is by no means a guarantee of anything.

>often

One should ask how much I fly before one would make an assumption. I can count on a single hand how many times I have had a plane change at the last minute.

Three of my last six flights have not been on the original aircraft; Flighty has notified me each of those times of an equipment swap. In two of those cases the type changed. I'm hardly the only person with this experience; https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/37053/may-an-airl....

There's likely to be some variability from airline to airline and whether or not you're flying out of a big hub with lots of equipment present; as with most things, YMMV. If you're terrified of flying on a 737-MAX to the point of wanting a refund if one gets swapped in, though... take the train.

I’m going on 15 years. I also don’t fly budget airlines. When this happened I was flying virgin america, AirTran, and spirit. Only once did a United flight (the majority of my travels) change on me prior to my flight

So maybe your experience is not the norm and one could be self reflective as I am?

No, the terms of the ticket will always permit swapping equipment.

That make sense in case of need and assuming most of the plane didn't select the option. But if you selected it, and they swap, are you reimbursed (with all the potential additional costs)?

No, of course not. You paid to be delivered intact to a particular destination. No part of the ticket's contract of carriage promises a particularly on-time arrival, any particular routing along the way, nor the type of aircraft.

Example terms: https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/contract-of-carriage.html#r...

> Times shown on tickets, timetables, published schedules or elsewhere, and aircraft type and similar details reflected on tickets or UA’s schedule are not guaranteed and form no part of this contract. UA may substitute alternate carriers or aircraft, delay or cancel flights, and alter or omit stopping places or connections shown on the ticket at any time.

That's a lot of lawyer-speak for "Our core business model has absolutely no guarantees and we can change it at any time for any reason and if our failure to serve our customers causes us to go bankrupt you rubes get to pay for it in the form of government bail-outs"

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