Originally Posted by
Smudge's Lot
There is never a "based aircraft", it won't stay in one base for the whole summer, or even a month!
They can be exchanged downroute where the crews will swop onto the other one, or they are just ferried (empty) where they might be needed.
There are various reasons why they keep changing, but the concept of a 1 airframe being based at any TUI airport has never been the truth and never will be.
There usually is "based" aircraft at certain bases for all airlines (well it's pretty obvious for BA/Virgin).
The reasons they'd swap out is for, as I've stated, maintenance that cannot be performed a the base due facilities (Usually akin to a car service check) and maybe where they need to clear a defect but again would rather do it in a base that has facilities to in case of grounding.
I'm not that ofay with TUI fleet and where they are based, but when Jet2 had the 757 split fleet, AG/AC/AE were predominately MAN based with AK/AB/AJ been LBA based. AA/AD/AI/AH/AN would swap between both bases would AH would be seen more in LBA then MAN and AD the other way round. It was only really AA/AI that would flick properly between the two.