Allocation of Aircraft to Flights
I've always wondered how long before a flight would an airline allocate specific aircraft to each flight. Obviously maintenance issues will change the plan but, generally, would they be allocated for the coming week, the day before or even 3 or 4 hours before.
I would guess aircraft allocated to regional airports would be assigned to flights for a week or two ahead. For major airlines with big hubs, do they review actual pending arrivals (i.e. taking into account known delays) and then allocate incoming aircraft to planned departures later in the day? BA could probably do this for 'pools' of B747's of different configurations perhaps.
airsmiles