I personally don’t think so. Management is addicted to EWR like crack. They have IAD right down the road to funnel connecting traffic through but chose to keep EWR at max capacity. At the merger for example we had JFK and EWR. JFK was closed post merger and EWR increased. IAH pre merger flew many more destinations like CDG, had nonstop to SYD post merger etc. ORD was a large 747 and 777 base. Now ORD is a shell with only a few 787s. They’ve streamlined a majority of the traffic through EWR and SFO (one of the fastest shrinking large cities in the USA) and wonder why things go wrong when there is a hiccup. The only mid continent base with more traffic post merger is DEN. EWR has historically been a commuter base. When weather is bad it doesn’t matter what base the crews are attached to, the majority hop a plane to get to work. IAH/DEN and to a smaller degree ORD have a much higher % of peeps simply driving in to start their trips. EWR/PHL/JFK/LGA all are affected with a single large cell. It’s not like having more EWR based pilots mean more locals driving to the airport when things go wrong. If that was the case there wouldn’t be any EWR unfilled CA slots.

I get what you’re saying. IAH is where they’re still able to fill CA slots so they’ve artificially increased it. The issue is still EWR and getting crews in/out IMO