They are selling transportation from location A to location B via an airplane. The specific airplane, assuming it has the features the customer paid for, is more of a technicality.
It's different when it's a deliberate conspiracy to mislead consumers, especially when that consumer is choosing services that advertise that a safe vehicle will be used.
If they just stopped showing what plane would be used on the route, maybe they'd get away with using 737-MAX series.
If they say 'it's a 737-800 don't worry about it' and swap in a max every time, or 'fly with us on an airbus' and bring in a boeing death-tube after a purposefully misleading advertisement of a different service...
Terms Of Service only gets you so far. It's not a fraud-dodge.
It's not fraud if it's in the Ts&Cs. But it is false advertising I suppose, if they advertise a flight on one aircraft _knowing_ that their plan is to swap it out, premeditation etc.
People exhibit abject apathy to these sorts of topics, lengthy Ts&Cs should be made illegal - edge cases that allow people to sue (in America I guess) companies for silly and stupid things should be dealt with by evolving the legal system, not with endless text nobody can or should have to read.
But even in an ideal no slippery Ts&Cs world, you'd still have to catch them making premeditated decisions to swap out equipment using that clause.
Traveling in a different vehicle than originally intended is not fraud. Rental car companies do this all the time.
Large countries without free market capitalism have much worse safety records for flying from a historical perspective.
To be clear, i’m referring to Russia and China.
In Russia they can sell you fake plastic cheese that catches fire, and you still have zero chance of winning a lawsuit. You compensation for wrongdoing or death will be minimal. So it’s more capitalist that US in this regard.
If I pay for beef, but you sell me pork, that’s fraud. If I pay for organic eggs, but you sell me ‘normal’ eggs, that’s fraud. Eggs are literally the same thing, but you can sell me the wrong airplane?
If you buy the airplane, you definitely get the airplane you bought. When you buy a ticket, you aren't buying an airplane, you're buying transportation on whatever airplane is most convenient for the airline