Friend of mine messaged coming back from Europe.

The website was showing the inbound late from EWR (thunderstorms in the northeast, departed hours late).

But, the outbound, Europe-to-EWR leg was not showing a departure time of, say, 90 minutes later i.e. quick turn and get the plane back ASAP, but rather, having the plane sit for 4-5 hours and then fly back to EWR. It said delayed due to flight crew availability.

Wouldn't the crew from the previous day's inbound just delay the report of their ~24hr layover, and show up at the new report time?

Why have the inbound, which was scheduled to arrive at 8AM, and gets in actually at 11:30AM, sit around until 3PM to go back? Why not leave right away?

Just wondered. I only fly domestic, couldn't figure it out. I went on there just to see and it looks like a few places, STR, BFS, FCO etc. were similar.

Looks like another nasty evening in the northeast is brewing over Pennsylvania as we speak.