Even if this is not a foolproof way to avoid flying on a 737 max, using it will provide a very _visible_ signal to the airlines. If they're losing ticket sales because people don't want to fly on a 737, the airlines will find a way to adapt. Even a marginal change of a few percentage points can shift a route from profitable to unprofitable.
Airbus is already outselling Boeing 2-1. If you're looking at a 5-10 year lead time anyways, they can expand production to eat further into Boeing's share if that's what the airlines demand.
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
> 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.)
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).
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
I love the idea, but as far as I know, there's nothing stopping an airline from changing the plane "last minute" right before the flight. Then you have to make a decision at the gate whether you want to turn around a go back home (or hotel) after spending hours getting to the airport, going through security, and waiting at the gate.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
I don’t think it makes sense for passengers to worry about the plane model. 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.
For the crew, things are a little different given that they are all day long, all year long in the same plane model, so those minuscule risks compound.
People are bad at conceptualising low probabilities. That’s why they play lottery!
It's going to be very difficult to avoid the 737 MAX going forward. Airlines love these planes because they save fuel and Boeing has a waiting list for them out to 2030. AFAIK you cannot order a new 737 from Boeing that is not a MAX.
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.
I'm at the point now where I choose an airline based on them not using Boeing. I don't even fly that much. It's not that I'm worried much about the safety, I'm just so annoyed by their culture and the stories I've heard over the years about how they gutted a once great engineering force.
Pretty important feature for all people flying in Russia nowadays. People there only trust Embraer Aircrafts, because all other aircrafts can‘t be maintained properly due to sanctions.
"As of January 2024, 180 aviation accidents and incidents have occurred,[1] including 38 hull loss accidents,[2] and a total of 1505 fatalities in 17 fatal accidents.[3]"
Buy a safer car, exercise, quit drinking, and improve your diet. These actions will have a far bigger impact on your lifespan than excluding 737 Max from your Kayak search results.
That said, Boeing needs a shake-up. They have become a little too cozy with the bureaucratic/political class and their benefactors.
Do a significant amount of people actually worry about this when booking a flight? The chances of incident, even on these models with recent incidents is still so unbelievably low, no?
I guess it's a form of being able to vote with your wallet; forcing the manufacturers to spend additional money/time on QC.
I had often heard that the best price for a flight is on the airline's website vs services like Kayak.
I didn't believe this as I knew some of the travel sites (E.g. Expedia) actually reserve hotel/flights spots etc.
However, recently the cheapest seat I could find for a flight on Kayak was around $3K (business seat to London) whereas the airline site had it for $2.3K.
Has made me now always check the airline site just to be sure given the savings of almost 10%.
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.
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!
This will have zero effect. First of all, this is a blip that will eventually disappear from your average passenger’s radar before the summer travel period unless Boeing is unable to satisfy FAA’s requirements in the coming months. Secondly, I believe people are mostly concerned with pricing and availability, not the aircraft type.
This is great, I now want to exclude all planes but the Max to try and scoop up all Boeing Max flights I possibly can.
Unfortunately I don't have the time or the logistics would be a bit crazy, trying to reversely find a reason to fly a route operated by the Max lol.
But seriously, if people were this anal about cars or buildings or trains the whole world would come to a screeching halt.
The lesson I suppose is that when building anything it's imperative to capitalize during the period of maximal logarithmic improvement because once you arrive at the end of the S-curve and the battle of the 9s begins it gets ugly real fast.
People will start spitting in your face forgetting everything you did in the past and demanding an ever fast and sudden march to the 200th decimal place.
I just want to be able to exclude "basic economy" (and its synonyms). I don't want premium economy, I don't want basic economy. I just want economy. My understanding is that it's not a different cabin so isn't possible to filter for most airlines but it's extremely frustrating to track prices on google flights et Al and receive notifications of price drops only to find that they are basic economy.
[+] [-] andjd|2 years ago|reply
Airbus is already outselling Boeing 2-1. If you're looking at a 5-10 year lead time anyways, they can expand production to eat further into Boeing's share if that's what the airlines demand.
[+] [-] shmatt|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] belter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfiorav|2 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] ugh123|2 years ago|reply
The industry's go-to method here will probably be lawyers and take-down notices to Kayak, before they adapt.
[+] [-] richwater|2 years ago|reply
This is MUCH, (and I must reiterate) MUCH harder than it sounds.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|2 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] jjav|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konschubert|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] HumblyTossed|2 years ago|reply
Yep, by suing the shit out of Kayak and anyone else doing this.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] lordofgibbons|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] instagib|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Arnt|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dacryn|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rob74|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mihaaly|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HenryBemis|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjrp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdjon|2 years ago|reply
I would say there is basically zero chance that you would be switched to a Boeing last minute with JetBlue.
[+] [-] vasco|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|2 years ago|reply
For the crew, things are a little different given that they are all day long, all year long in the same plane model, so those minuscule risks compound.
People are bad at conceptualising low probabilities. That’s why they play lottery!
[+] [-] dreamcompiler|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] swader999|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] electroly|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalupa|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amai|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karaterobot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andsoitis|2 years ago|reply
List of accidents and incidents involving the Airbus A320 family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
"As of January 2024, 180 aviation accidents and incidents have occurred,[1] including 38 hull loss accidents,[2] and a total of 1505 fatalities in 17 fatal accidents.[3]"
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willmadden|2 years ago|reply
That said, Boeing needs a shake-up. They have become a little too cozy with the bureaucratic/political class and their benefactors.
[+] [-] nullandvoid|2 years ago|reply
I guess it's a form of being able to vote with your wallet; forcing the manufacturers to spend additional money/time on QC.
[+] [-] Brian_K_White|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golergka|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexpotato|2 years ago|reply
I had often heard that the best price for a flight is on the airline's website vs services like Kayak.
I didn't believe this as I knew some of the travel sites (E.g. Expedia) actually reserve hotel/flights spots etc.
However, recently the cheapest seat I could find for a flight on Kayak was around $3K (business seat to London) whereas the airline site had it for $2.3K.
Has made me now always check the airline site just to be sure given the savings of almost 10%.
[+] [-] toast0|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sokoloff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|2 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] ducklingquack|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpinJack_Cash|2 years ago|reply
Unfortunately I don't have the time or the logistics would be a bit crazy, trying to reversely find a reason to fly a route operated by the Max lol.
But seriously, if people were this anal about cars or buildings or trains the whole world would come to a screeching halt.
The lesson I suppose is that when building anything it's imperative to capitalize during the period of maximal logarithmic improvement because once you arrive at the end of the S-curve and the battle of the 9s begins it gets ugly real fast.
People will start spitting in your face forgetting everything you did in the past and demanding an ever fast and sudden march to the 200th decimal place.
[+] [-] albert180|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TekMol|2 years ago|reply
Am I missing something?
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thallium205|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imglorp|2 years ago|reply
https://onemileatatime.com/boeing-737-8/
[+] [-] jnsie|2 years ago|reply