Is there a different way to write get methods in Java?

Seems like you are wanting to implement the Comparable interface? https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/lang/Comparable.html

That is it looks like you have an attribute, planeNumber, that you want to use to compare the classes?

Maybe you want something like this

 import java.util.Comparator; import java.util.Objects; public class Airplane implements Comparable<Airplane> { private final int planeNumber; public Airplane(final int planeNumber) { this.planeNumber = planeNumber; } public final int getPlaneNumber() { return planeNumber; } @Override public int compareTo(final Airplane o) { return Objects.compare(this, o, Comparator.comparing(Airplane::getPlaneNumber)); } public static void main(final String... args) { System.out.println(new Airplane(1).compareTo(new Airplane(2))); System.out.println(new Airplane(100).compareTo(new Airplane(100))); System.out.println(new Airplane(1000).compareTo(new Airplane(100))); } } 

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You could add a method comparing the field values to your class like this (omitting null check in the methods):

class Scratch { public static void main(String[] args) { ObjectWithPlaneNumber o1 = new ObjectWithPlaneNumber(42); ObjectWithPlaneNumber o2 = new ObjectWithPlaneNumber(42); ObjectWithPlaneNumber o3 = new ObjectWithPlaneNumber(11); System.out.println(o1.hasSamePlaneNumber(o2)); System.out.println(o1.hasSamePlaneNumber(o3)); } static class ObjectWithPlaneNumber { private final int planeNumber; public ObjectWithPlaneNumber(int planeNumber) { this.planeNumber = planeNumber; } public boolean hasSamePlaneNumber(ObjectWithPlaneNumber other) { return this.planeNumber == other.planeNumber; } } }