Originally Posted by Lanceair

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…💵🫴👨‍✈️😁