If you're going to serve it, find a way to have extra crew available. AS serves a few northeast/mid-atlantic cities - BOS, EWR, PHL, BWI, DCA. Short of a crew base between PHL/EWR (which could hop to any of the other airports), maybe deadhead an extra FA to the east coast each day.

I don't know, I don't work in airline logistics, I just know what pisses me off as a passenger. I can deal with weather, and I understand mechanicals happen, but when an airline doesn't have the crew needed to get me to my destination, I'd be irritated.

Maybe this happens so infrequently that losing 6 figures on this delay and others like it are cheaper than the solutions. In that case, not much to be done.