What would you have done?

[roncachamp]

14 CFR Part 91 tells pilots what to do. FAAO 7110.65 tells controllers what to do. While the information in 7110.65 may be interesting or helpful or useful to a pilot, it is not governing for a pilot. At the end of the day, the pilot must obey the flight rules in Part 91 as they are written there, regardless of what the controllers are told in 7110.65 about what controllers are supposed to do. 14 CFR 91.123(a) does not give the pilot latitude to negotiate with controllers once an instruction is given, nor does it allow the pilot to pick and choose which instructions to obey based on the pilot's interpretation of 7110.65. This was made clear by the FAA and NTSB in Ellis and the other cases listed above, and I've yet to see any case which says otherwise.

Neither the FAA nor the NTSB said anything like that in Ellis or any other case.

 

[PittsDriver]

You feel the authors of that regulation want pilots to adhere to instructions they don't want controllers to issue. That's absurd.

What's absurd is you arguing for 7 pages about how you'd like for the rules to be written instead of just acknowledging how they are written - even if the fact of the matter is the rules are not perfect and, yes, in some cases silly.

In the final analysis, if there's any confict, safe wins over legal anyway. If a controller tells me to do something completely proper that I can't safely do, then I won't do it, we'll work it out, and it'll all be fine. If the controller tells me to do something outside his scope of authority and I can safely do it, why wouldn't I? What's absurd is you expecting pilots to know the chapter and verse of what controllers are authorized and limited to do and espousing that it's OK to ignore an instruction based upon that "knowledge." Pilots aren't trained, nor should they be, to think that way. We're on the same team, ATC and pilots, and I expect my team mates in ATC to be looking out for my best interests in a larger context than just my flight. I have no problem deferring to any ATC request if it's safe to do so in the interest of being a good team mate. Maybe it just helps him get his job done a little better and it's good karma.

 

[Palmpilot]

You feel the authors of that regulation want pilots to adhere to instructions they don't want controllers to issue. That's absurd.

It is absolutely not absurd, and I'll tell you why: having pilots make their own determinations of which instructions are authorized by a document that they are neither trained nor tested on, and then allowing them to refuse instructions based on those determinations would be chaos.

Even if pilots were trained and tested on the 7110.65, it would still be chaos, because many of them would get it wrong. If you doubt this, you need only look at the many instances that have been cited in various threads in which controllers, who ARE trained and tested on 7110.65, routinely do things that are at variance with it.

When it comes to flight safety, I'll take "absurd" over chaos any day of the week.

 

[Palmpilot]

Neither the FAA nor the NTSB said anything like that in Ellis or any other case.

...yet.

If pilots start making their own deteriminations of what the controller's manual allows ATC to do, and operating contrary to ATC instructions based on those determinations, that could change really fast.