I don’t even think the type is shown during booking, or at least not early enough for me to give a shit at that point; also, very often there is a single company offering the route I need so it’s not like I can pick a different flight based on that. They’re likely to be some type of Airbus simply because the companies I use have a lot of those; medium-sized models on account of those being the appropriate ones for the traffic on that route. I don’t remember model codes, but I like looking at stuff such as how many turbines it has, how are they positioned with respect to the wings, etc.
My favorite seats are closely behind the wings and on the window; I like watching the flaps. I’m the “don’t bother me with technical details” version of an airplane nerd, I think.
Oh, if that’s the question, then I’ve literally never known ahead of time what plane I bought tickets for. I didn’t even realize there was a way to see. Granted, I never went hunting for it, but it’s never been presented as an obvious point of fact to me in any of my bookings over the past few decades.
All I really want to know when booking is the seat layout. Is it"X__XX"; “XX__XX”; “XXX__XXX”; “XX__XXX__XX”, etc. That way I know how to choose my preferred seat.
I think I picked option 3 because I haven’t been paying attention to that when booking, unless the information is just in front of me. But, as I mentioned, I’m wary of the 737MAX, and I now know how to check before booking on SW, and intend to check. (For SW, you have to look up the flight via the flight status tool. They don’t tell you in the flight booking tool.)
Even people who never have paid any attention to it before might make a point of checking for the MAX.
I don’t pay attention, but recall an amusing incident circa 1979 when DC-10’s first resumed service after having their certificate revoked.
While waiting to board, passengers commented that it was a DC-10. A woman didn’t believe it! The airline wouldn’t dare fly this unsafe plane. After she boarded and the plane was taxiing for take-off, the woman must have looked at the card, learned she was on a DC-10, and insisted that she get off! The captain took the plane back to the gate.
Punchline: After this detour, the woman was too embarrassed to get off. :smack: I was seated close to the woman but cannot report on her further activities. In those days I slept on planes.
I look, as a matter of interest, but the plane type is really controlled by my preferred airlines, and by the route. When you’re flying from Australia to the States, there’s only a couple of aircraft that can make that jump. A380, 787, and maybe the 777*.
Qantas will (apparently) be phasing out the A380, which is fine. It’s impressive, but it takes a long time to board, deplane, and get your luggage.
I’ll second going to SeatGuru to pick out a particular seat.
That said, if given a choice between a Boeing (even now!) and another type, I’ll pick the Boeing. Airbus et al build airplanes; Boeing has built legends.
*And the 747, but just about all of those have been retired.
I remember noticing when I was a kid. My sibs and I were really into looking at which planes we’d be on and knew the differences between the 707 and 727 with the cool tail and the big 747. Now, the only reason I look at what plane I’ll be on is to make a choice on seatguru.
I don’t know if they’ll change this when it comes back, but I believe some airlines that operated both the 737NG and 737 Max weren’t differentiating them in their booking systems.
Not only that, but aircraft types can be changed at the last minute for a variety of reasons. If you really don’t want to fly a MAX you would have to book with a company that doesn’t operate any at all.
I only tend to notice the plane when I’m boarding or on it, if there’s something new or remarkable about the exterior or cabin features and I’m curious about the type of aircraft it is.
The only time I noticed was my last flight. I was going on Airbus, so I took along a decal that said “If it’s not Boeing I’m not going.” And I stuck it to the back of the lavatory door, right at eye level. When the door is open, it’s hidden. So hopefully the cleaning crew will miss it.
I hope someone got a chuckle out of it, and that it is still there.
Or maybe they were technically differentiating them, but not in a way that made it obvious to most people that it was a Max. How many people would know when booking a flight that a 737-800 is an NG while a 737-8 is a Max? Boeing dropped the “X00” designations starting with the 787, and officially the 737 Max family is simply called the 737-7, -8, and -9. “Max” had always been pretty much just a marketing name.
As I recall most airlines didn’t specifically call out whether a 737 was a “Classic” or “Next Generation” model back when it was common for airlines to operate both, they’d just list it as a 737-300 or 737-800 or whatever. So it makes sense to me that they wouldn’t specifically say “Max” but rather call it a 737-8.
I was going to say that my employer just lists aircraft as the basic type, e.g., B787, B777, A320 etc, but I checked and they list the specific variant, B787-9, B777-200, A321neo and so on.
Seat guru always tells you which specific planes might be used for a particular route. Sometimes there are a couple, but they’ll tell you both. The airline can’t trade a 737 Max for an A320 at the last minute – that was the whole point is stretching the definition of a 737, so it could be swapped with other 737s.
Sure they can. If the A320 has a mechanical problem that can’t be fixed in a reasonable amount of time, and a 737 is the only other plane they have available at the moment (and a crew qualified to fly it, etc.), then that’s what they’ll use. It’s certainly preferable to canceling the flight or having a major delay.
I missed the edit window, but I wanted to add this anecdote. I was on a Ethiopian Airlines flight a few years ago that was listed as a 767 on the schedule, and when I got to the airport there was a 737 there (which would explain why it was overbooked). I’ve heard stories of people having the opposite happen to them as well, like something went wrong with the 737 they were supposed to be on so the airline put them on a friggin’ 747 because that was what they had.
It makes sense to me that they would have been used that way, and also that they would have changed that practice when issues came up around the MAX. I’d be interested to know when they changed it. Whether it was earlier in the process, or just once it was going to be grounded (at which point, I presume they made decisions about what flights they preferred to deal with cancelling, and assigned the MAXes to them).