> Unfortunately, this is just the reality of using an RDBMS. I've seen similar behavior on Informix and SQL Server (with a smaller load than yours). They all occasionally generate suboptimal query plans. That's what your DBA is for.

Other DBs let you lock in query plans or provide query hints, but postgres' developers are against either, which is not necessarily complete nonsense as it avoids users shooting themselves in the foot… but it also prevents users from digging themselves out of query planner stupidity.