Quick Q. Barring last minute tech events, how soon before a flight do the Ops guys potentially swap out an aircraft vs what was originally on the plan? I ask as doing OCLI for MLA-LGW at about 11pm GMT for a flight at 2pm the following day, I was shown the G-GATx seat map. FR24 confirmed G-GATN, so my long-standing choice of 2F remained a good one. I arrived at the gate the next day to see G-MIDY sat there! She/it would have departed LGW at about 10am or so, so there would have been approx 12 hours during which a swap could have happened.

Now 2F on MIDY was perfectly fine, however on aircraft having the new seats I would have been a bit miffed as I do not enjoy that pitch on longer flights. To me it was obvious that the reason I’d chosen 2F was for the bulkhead, so when aircraft are swapped late is there any attempt to reassign seating “preferences” or is this a case of damned if you do damned if you don’t? As it happened 1F was unoccupied, but I felt no need to change. 1D was occupied though, and that passenger was given that new seat at the gate just prior to boarding as I was in the queue behind him– have no idea what his original seat was.