IGNITION OVERRIDE: Although I am not familiar with EWR, I see what you mean and you are probably correct about following the yellow line.. Now, about the mountain airport example, there are alot of those in Europe too and what you described can happen in alot of ill equipped eastern european airports, some of them in the mountains. And of course, you as a captain WILL take more fuel, written in the sop or not. That's first common sense and there is no paradox in putting common sense toghether with good airmanship and sop's.
TURTLENECK: I see your point, but in the end, the judge of your good airmanship is the outcome of your flight. And all that happened in between you getting in that plane and getting out of it. Has the flight been treated professionally by you and your crew, has it been safe, comfortable for it's passengers, have you and your crew applied companie's sop's at all times and deviated from it when needed with proper briefings and correct understanding of the reasons for those deviations? Even more so, have all this been done in bad wx? Then you've used good airmanship. And I belive even most of those non lateral thinking guys will think the same.
rgds