What's the best airline to fly during a snow storm?

Scott McCartney explored this question in an interesting article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

It turns out that the various airlines have markedly different approaches to bad weather dictated by any number of factors but in the end it's all about the money.

You fly, the money keeps coming; planes sitting on the ground earn zero.

And that's not even considering the money you're paying to all your employees standing by.

If you're the type who wants to get where they're going as soon as possible no matter what, you're better off flying JetBlue which, as you can see from the graphic below

(which accompanied the Journal article) is much more aggressive than United or American when it comes to flying in bad weather.

Me, I'm the United type: one snowflake and I'm quite content to be heading back home to wait it out.

It's a bit like anesthesiologists who are really good in emergencies: the thing that first occurs to me is, "Why?"

I mean, how did they get so good?

Is it because they get into trouble more often and therefore have more experience in such crises?

I'm reminded of a resident I worked with at the University of Virginia: even in his third (final) year of anesthesiology residency, every day he'd come back into the ready room saying stuff like, "I had something really amazing happen in my room today."

Hey — when you're in your first year that's a reasonable comment more often than not.

But by the time you're a senior resident, preparing to go out into private practice, you'd better have your routine down such that "amazing" things rarely happen.

Otherwise, life in the real world will not be pretty.