Response/ Answer to "How upset should one be?

From a subjective almost, humanistic point of view, Lucrecia Dove, you are quite right when you say that “Mr. Sussex would be more upset” for all the reasons you stated: the whole “close but no cigar” proverb. However, the interesting thing about this scenario is that if one was to ponder it from a more objective approach they would realize that Mr. Sussex really has no reason to be more upset that Mr. Phil. Reason being, they are essentially in identical positions; that is, they both missed their flights (albeit one more narrowly than the other), and because of the traffic jam that they were both in together, it is safe to assume that they were both mentally “expecting” to miss their flights. Therefore, when considered from this perspective, there is really no fundamental reason why Mr. Sussex should be more upset. However, in saying this, it is much easier to formulate certain possibilities for Mr. Sussex in which he would have arrived on time for his flight (ex. just got one more green light); accordingly, many do end up concluding that he should be more upset that Mr. Phil.