How far out are flights planned at major airports and who is responsible for planning these flights and the gates at which they arrive? Are certain gates chosen for a reason or is it random?
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Airlines have a team of schedulers and dispatchers. They coordinate with the civil aviation authority (for the US it is the FAA) for what are called ‘take-off’ or ‘landing’ slots. In other words, an airport has a carrying capacity and airlines pay to get those slots. So the scheduler needs to sort out how long to leave the plane on the ground for connecting arrivals (the #1 consideration in scheduling) *and* when they are allowed to take off and land at each airport.
There is a channel on youtube called “Wendover Productions” which did a whole episode on how flights are scheduled and how it is a lot of art and science. Southwest ‘pushes the metal’, United is best at getting connecting passengers, and the middle east airlines uniformly suck at it.
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