Originally Posted by chinookie

Recourse for what?

You booked a ticket from point A to point B (or in your case, maybe from point A back to point A, with stops in B, C and D - seems incredibly foolish to me, but people do lots of things that I can't relate to).

There's no guarantee of a specific airplane. If they fail to get you from point A to - well, wherever you're trying to go - then in that case you do have a right to get them to provide what you booked - a trip to somewhere. But not on any specific airplane.