Originally Posted by
UALinIAH
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
A lot of what you said is true, EWR has always been a **** show, even when properly staffed with pilots, ramp crew and controllers. I think the difference now is that the EWR 737 has shrunk by about 100 crews.(as an example, I cannot speak to the other BES) The domino effect of that is less crews actually on reserve (whether sitting at home or in the crash pad) less crews available to drive in (think 5 hour radius), that gets you Delaware, Northern VA, central PA, Upstate NY, Southern ME to the Cape. Many of the folks in that radius usually commute in on a jet, however, when offered SRM with conflict, it wouldn’t take too much math to figure out a long drive to NJ would be lucrative. When you are artificially pumping crews into EWR to fly the schedule, and the inevitable CF hits, it becomes impossible to recover the operation because all your crews are stuck on the tarmac, waiting in the crew room or searching for hotels.
In another twist of irony, if you look at the NB CA positions across the country, they have all been homogenized, so the historically junior bases, SFO, LAX and EWR, are no longer so junior.
If you remember a couple years ago, it was managements plan to fly Hub flying out the Hub, thus isolating problems in the system and solving IROPs locally, instead of relying on other bases. I think the vacant CA positions blew up that idea, so management had to 180, and search for EWR CAs in MCO, LAS, ORD, IAH and DEN.
Now that management has tried every other way to solve this problem, there is another, rather ONE option left, perhaps the easiest and most logical answer, and now after four straight days of IROP, the most economical answer…💵🫴👨✈️😁