Alexander Frater's all-time classic aviation book "Beyond the Blue Horizon", written in 1985, describes a journey from London to Australia stopping at all the places Imperial Airways used to do 50 years previously. On his sector from Rome to Athens, Frater was booked on TWA, which at the time operated a 747 from New York to Rome, and then a 727 (same flight number, of course) on to Athens and Tel Aviv. TWA based a small number of 727s in Europe for such flights.
Frater describes the ludicrous situation that the 747 was running late from New York, and the 727, which was fully booked with connecting travellers, was dispatched on time to Athens with a load of him and six other pasengers. As the only work for the 727 that day was this single two-sector flight, it did seem a silly example of the application of US corporate procedures.