Check on flightaware.com
Just changed mine LA → Midway
I get so angry every time I read the airline spokesperson say something like “we have 100% confidence in our fleet and staff”, or something to the effect.
Problem is, you might think you’re booked on one aircraft and the airline swaps aircraft. Happens all the time. I suspect American and Southwest are going to lose a lot of business until this is resolved, they both have large numbers of these type aircraft.
I was horrified after the first accident…to have a safety system that overrides pilots inputs, that isn’t taught or even in the manual. Insane. However, we do have to wait until the specifics of the second accident are revealed, it could be completely unrelated.
@busdriver11 , I also read they can switch aircraft at anytime, but I felt like I had to do it anyway. I hope they start losing business, so they will just ground them.
I know what you mean conmama, you do what you feel you can, and the rest you don’t have control over. Here’s what I’ll guess happens…the carriers that just have a few, ground them (because it’s easy to pull just a few jets out of service), and those that have many, proclaim they have full confidence in the aircraft (until there’s no getting around it).
If I was flying this airplane, I would be wondering what other safety systems did you install to override pilots inputs that you didn’t bother to tell us about?
Cheapest flight on another airline for my D is $2,500 (from a different city farther away than the one she is flying from & different airline). Her calculation (physicist that she is) is that it is ~1 in 200,000 odds of a crash. She says she’ll take it. If the airline (or a regulatory agency) grounds the planes, we should get some money back (European airline). I do wonder, given who the US secretary of transportation is, whether airline & manufacturer profits might be put ahead of customer safety. 
I checked our upcoming flights. Plain ole 737-700s. Phew! I’m with the ground them until they’re sure rather than praying and hoping crowd.
As someone who has been scared of flying my whole life, and only flew for the first time in 28 years last week, the news of this crash really shook me. I’m shocked that the U.S. airlines aren’t grounding those planes until the cause of this crash and the one last fall are pinpointed. I don’t know how the flight crews can feel safe taking those aircrafts up right now.
Not just that. The plane behaved the same way as the other one before the crash, turning and spiraling. I can’t believe Boeing didn’t get to the bottom of it after the first incident.
They thought they did get to the bottom of it. I believe there was supposed to be additional pilot training on what to do, and possibly also a software update for the plane. Whether the software update and training were completed in this case are unknown. Also, whether it was exactly the same problem is unknown.
After the Southwest incident where a piece of the engine blew out a window and a woman died (737-700 I think), I was really glad to be on a newer airplane when I flew with them. Now it’s yikes all around.
I woke up to that news yesterday morning, just hours before Dh was getting on a flight to London and d17 was flying back to school after being home for Spring Break. Dh always flies Delta for work to maintain his status for upgrades so I’m glad they aren’t using this plane. D17 flies both Alaska and SWA. She flew Alaska home but was on SWA back to school yesterday. Thankfully she was on a 737-700. I’m actually getting ready to book flights to visit D17 in April with my youngest. When I priced it out, it was cheapest to fly Alaska there but SWA on the way back. I think I’ll spend the extra $30/ticket and fly Alaska on the way back so I don’t have to worry about this.
Aww, crap, I forgot about my high schooler. He’s going on a school trip to Asia in April. I don’t have any details on the flights. Our meeting about the trip is next week but now I’ll be worrying.
You mean the guy has examined the data from the flight recorders?! Wow that was fast.
That plane is a faulty design – bad balance. It flies like a piece of junk. So they have some “secret” system to keep it level. With the number of planes ordered, Boeing is in big trouble. Lawyers are going to have a field day. They are going to have to modify the design and figure out a way to retrofit the current fleet. And they better act fast. I wouldn’t be caught in one. I’ll drive, thanks.
SWA changed our booking to a different aircraft today over the phone. When I tried to do it online the price was $60 more per ticket since we are close to a travel date but over the phone they waived the difference since we were requesting aircraft type change. I guess they got a lot of those requests today.
I did buy travel insurance for my kid for this flight. I’m sure they won’t cover if we just booked her on another airline now, since her flight is still scheduled. There are no other daily flights for the airline she is on out of that airport, so no options for them to rebook her. But if that airline or a regulatory agency grounds the plane or they cancel the flight later this week, we MIGHT get something out of that if we rebook. So… I’m watching the news minute by minute to see if that happens. (If anyone sees that Icelandair is grounding their Max 8s, please PM me!). I’m carrying her flight info and travel insurance info with me to work tomorrow, and will call the travel insurance co to discuss coverage “just in case” so I can rapidly rebook if needed without worrying about that part. I thought the riots in Paris were going to be the disrupter for our trip… little did I know! Glad I did a lot of planning & prep before this week so I’m not crazy trying to organize packing, etc while this is happening.
@4kids4us Here’s an article I found because my student regularly flies SW home. Do what they say in the article and check the route - not all routes use the 737-Max 8. In the article, someone did an analysis of the SW and American routes that routinely use the 737 Max 8. It isn’t all the routes that SW flies, for instance, only on a few.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/737-max-operators-ethiopian-crash/
I don’t know how consistent SW is with actually flying the plane type that it says on the booking screen, but, for instance, in the case of my students usual non-stop flights, it shows the plane type as a 737-700 exclusively for every NS flight I checked.
https://www.swamedia.com/pages/corporate-fact-sheet says that Southwest flies the 143 seat 737-700 (512 aircraft) and the 175 seat 737-800 (207 aircraft) and 737 Max 8 (31 aircraft). Substitutions are probably more likely to be of the same size aircraft, although a larger one could be substituted in advance if they decide to increase the route’s capacity in advance, or on the day of flight if the original aircraft is not available and no same size aircraft is available but there is a larger one available.