Danair 8
"Just to add, the Britannia 737's used to swop around frequently (seemed like every other flight!) as well while operating 3 rotations a day - unlike Thomson 737's today (at NCL at least) which stay based for months."
One reason for the swopping was that at that time pilots were allowed to do Daily Inspections. This meant that Brit could send an aircraft to, say, Cardiff, without having any engineering support there. The pilots would do a Daily before the first rotation of the day. This could be done for, I think 5 days, then the aircraft would be rotated through an engineering base of a pre-planned W pattern.
Once it became necessary for the Daily to be done by an Engineer, there had to be engineering support at all outstations, and the regular W patterns ceased.
How I miss doing a watertrap drain at 6 in the morning, getting half a gallon of fuel up my sleeve, and smelling like a submariner for the rest of the day.