Not a pilot or very well-versed in this area, but I do know there is a ton of research on airline pricing/scheduling out there. The only reason I do know is I w

Not a pilot or very well-versed in this area, but I do know there is a ton of research on airline pricing/scheduling out there. The only reason I do know is I wrote a short term paper for college years ago and remember that I easily found sources. Airfare pricing in itself is a fairly complex algorithm that runs each time someone books a flight. Thus the reason one person may get a different price from another person booking at the same time on the same flight. As for schedules there are probably just as many variables that come into play. Time of day, the departing and arrival airport locations, total flight times, overall demand, date, fuel costs, the revenue the airline is able to generate from a flight, etc... are just some of the variables. I don't have any papers off the top of my head I can recommend, but a quick search of Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com http://scholar.google.com) will return plenty of results for you. Hope that helps.