The mco / gigantic iah 737 base is a disaster for the ewr 737 operation. They have had a ridiculous amount of missed trips in one week in ewr alone. When 70% of the base is commuting on primarily 737's and that base has been shrunk to its smallest size in a decade... there is no one to pick up the broken pairings or premium pay when you absolutely need to recover. Half the base is at 90 hr lines, there is zero ability to trade days because staffing is so low causing sick calls, and they simply can't get people from other bases quickly enough.

Either you positive space commuters in busy months or give a cost of living stipend to staff ewr. You can't run an unreliable operation and ask commuters to spend one of their 13 days off coming in 24 hrs early. The outstation idea might work but you can't shrink a base and fleet that needs to be robust for bad weather and a disaster of an operation on a good day. I think we are going to see a lot of not pilot friendly knee jerk reactions before manpower planning admits fault in this situation.