"RNR" wrote in message
...
As we all know, the AIM is not regulatory.

Right, but that just means that its contents do not *constitute*
regulations. It does not mean that its contents do not bear on the
reasonable interpretation of the regulations (or of the terms used therein).
On the contrary, the FAA says explicitly (in the AIM's preface) that the
purpose of the AIM is to offer pilots guidance in understanding the
regulations and associated practices.

How much clout it carries
depends upon whether the FAA is using it against a pilot or a pilot is
using it as a defence against the FAA.

Several pilots have put forth the claim that the AIM only works in one
direction (namely, when it's on the FAA's side in legal proceedings), but no
one here has offered any documentation in support of that claim. No one has
shown even a single case in which the FAA successfully (or even
unsuccessfully!) took action against a pilot for abiding by a provision of
the AIM.

Not to discount all of the
interesting comments regarding the meaning of the regs, but I pity the
poor pilot who finds himself in the position of going up against the
precedent set by these "old" cases.

The cases aren't just "old". What matters is not their age, but rather that
they address a situation that no longer obtains (namely, a situation in
which the FAA had no official explicit published definition of the term
"known icing conditions").

It strikes me as misplaced for pilots to worry so much about a specific kind
of flagrant injustice that (as far as anyone here knows) has never actually
taken place. It's not that I just trust the authorities to behave
reasonably. On the contrary, one reason the misplaced worry concerns me is
that it could serve as an invitation for those in authority to move in the
direction of inflicting such an injustice, for they can see that many pilots
have already resigned themselves to accepting (apart from some newsgroup
grumbling) an intolerable violation of fairness that isn't even occurring
yet. That anticipatory resignation, it seems to me, undermines one of the
important forces that helps keep the authorities in check.

--Gary

PS: I keep restoring r.a.p. to this thread because icing conditions can
occur outside of clouds, so the discussion is pertinent to VFR as well as
IFR flight.