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Question of the Week

How often do you invoke your discretion to defer the suggestion of a controller in the interest of your own safety?
These incidents are isolated and EXTREMELY rare. Until technology catches up to my cockpit, the controllers have a better picture of what's going on outside my aircraft, and I'm inclined to listen to them.
I have, in the past, refused a controller's directions. But I consider it a rare event.
If I actually did everything the controllers asked, I'd never get where I'm going — not on time, anyway. PIC is PIC, and controllers do not always know best. ATC serves as my extra set of eyes, but I still rely mainly on my own — and the gray noodles behind them — to take care of business, facilitating my own plans through ATC. Controllers work FOR me, and I work WITH them.
The pilot/controller relationship is one that is widely misunderstood — both pilots and controllers seem to feel that it's the controllers' way or bust. That's a piece of pilot culture that needs to change.


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