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After watching a video on how a major aircraft manufacturer builds their planes, I am considering avoiding flying on them. I usually fly between Austria and northern Germany.

If I wanted to never board certain types of aircraft on those routes, how can I do it?

I am aware of three obvious options:

  1. Travel by rail.
  2. Look up Wikipedia pages of airlines operating in this region and see whether or not they have any airplanes I consider unsafe. For example, according to the Wikipedia page about Eurowings, this company only has several Airbus and one Boeing 737-800 aircraft. Then I can decide whether or not I feel comfortable flying those airplanes.
  3. When buying a ticket, look at the aircraft type (if it is specified).

The problem with the second and third approaches could be codeshare agreements when the airline operating the flight is different from the one selling the ticket. I am not sure whether or not such agreements are practiced in the region in question.

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How to make sure I never board an airplane made by a particular vendor?

There are only two options

  1. Stop flying all together
  2. Don't board if the wrong aircraft shows up at the gate. This may include forfeiting your trip and/or having to buy a same-day ticket right then and there.

Almost all flights will disclose the planned aircraft at time of booking (code share or not), so you can minimize the risk. However, it's never guaranteed, and there is always a risk of the airline swapping equipment last minute or rerouting due to flight cancellations or delays

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Apart from Eurowings, when it comes to short-haul routes (which Austra-Germany is), European airlines usually have either Boeing 737+Embraer or Airbus A320+Embraer or exclusively 737 or exclusively A320 fleets, but not 737+A320. LH and Austrian have Airbus+Embraer. Ryanair is exclusively 737, Wizzair/Easyjet is exclusively A320 family. For the "classic" airlines, code-sharing is possible only within an alliance: as LH and Austrian is within Star Alliance, the only other airlines which is using 737 is LOT. So one option is to fly with the LH group but avoid LOT flights (which can be either Embraer or 737), or fly Wizzair/Easyjet - the latter are exclusively A320.

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    Don't forget, though, if a flight is cancelled at the last minute, they may book you on a totally different airline (possibly not within the alliance) to get you to your destination. It may work out to be cheaper for the airline to do that than put you up overnight or pay whatever compensation is required. (I've had it happen on US domestic flights.)
    – FreeMan
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 14:11
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    @FreeMan Yeah, that happens pretty frequently. Just because two airlines don't have a codeshare agreement doesn't meant that they don't have an interline agreement for irregular operations. Also, it's not correct to say that codesharing only occurs within an alliance on the major carriers. There are lots of examples of cross-alliance or non-alliance codeshare agreements among the major airlines and also cases where carriers will sell tickets onto other carriers even without a codeshare agreement. For example, you can buy a Delta (SkyTeam) ticket that connects on to ANA or Singapore (Star.)
    – reirab
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 17:05
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    I have the feeling booking on a different airline is not that common for European short-haul flights, especially if you don't explicitly ask about it, certainly with low-cost airlines. I have experienced many irregular operations over the years and have been offered different things (including travel by bus between Basel and Zürich to catch another flight to my destination) but never an out-of-alliance flight. A friend was also offered a 3 or 4-day hotel stay in Lisbon (plus EC261 compensation) to wait for the next Easyjet flight with availability rather than a booking on another airline.
    – Relaxed
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 8:26
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    @reirab ok, I wasn't aware of such Skyteam <-> Star cross-alliance codesharing. Good to know that there are cases!
    – user16132
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 12:17
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    @Relaxed It doesn't surprise me that an airline like EasyJet or Ryanair (or other LCCs) wouldn't have interline agreements for IRROPS, but the major carriers not having them does seem kind of surprising coming from the other side of the pond. In the U.S., the legacy carriers generally have interline agreements with each other to accept transfer passengers in the case of IRROPS regardless of alliance. Southwest, however, doesn't do that. That's not to say that being transferred to another carrier is something that happens often, but it can help in the event of large delays or cancellations.
    – reirab
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 17:53
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On a ticket, the flight number can be searched in Google Search and some aviation sites like flightstats.com, give the aircraft equipment model which lets you know the vendor.

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    I am not the downvoter but I guess the objection is that only tells you about the aircraft used on a specific (past) date. Looking at the recent history for a given route does tell you quite a bit but there is no guarantee. These sites don't have any direct insight into an airline's planned operations.
    – Relaxed
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 8:28

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