Space to park the shear number of jets showing up that eventually won’t all be able to be staffed by normal overnighting crews. Vegas only has 100 captains almost all filled by lateral captain bids. IAH on the other hand grew by nearly 350 new captains.
The company unnecessarily grew IAH to get butts in seats. Before the company decided to do that lax was projected to be staffed to 340 captains. Now only 220. They sent all the unfilled LAX/SFO/EWR positions to IAH and smaller degree DEN to get butts in seats. Only
time will tell whether the company really wants 700+ captains in IAH, it was definitely a move to alleviate the unfilled CA vacancy problem though.