It's no usenet legend, it's FAA v. Merrell. The standard is absolute,
abject deference.
http://www.aviationlawcorp.com/conte...s.html#appeals

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The Court of Appeals Relegates the NTSB to Rubber-Stamping
On appeal, The FAA argued that the NTSB is required to defer to the FAA's
litigation interpretation of its own regulations. The NTSB refused to defer
to the FAA in this case. The Board ruled that the Agency had offered no
evidence of any validly adopted written policy guidelines on the issue. The
NTSB believed that the agency had merely offered the "litigation statements"
of FAA enforcement lawyers on the question of how to interpret the
regulations pertinent to a misunderstood ATC clearance. The Board felt that
the interpretation of the regulation about whether the captain was careless
under the circumstances was factual in nature and it has always been within
the prerogatives of the Board to reverse factual findings regarding alleged
violations of the rules.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the decision of the NTSB and
held that the refusal of the Board to defer to the FAA on this question of
agency interpretation was "error." The circuit justices ruled that:
The FAA is not required to promulgate interpretations through rule making or
the issuance of policy guidelines, but may instead do so through litigation
before the NTSB .... The fact that this mode of regulatory interpretation
necessarily is advanced through the litigation statements of counsel does
not relieve the NTSB of its statutory obligation to accorded due deference.
FAA v. Merrell at 577-578.
The Circuit Court went so far as to tell the Board that because the FAA is
entitled to launch new policies through administrative adjudication, "it may
sometimes be necessary for the NTSB to accommodate such policies by changing
its jurist prudential course." Even more amazingly, the Court held that
"because the Board is bound to follow such interpretations, it may at times
be both necessary and proper for the Board to depart from its prior case
law."
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"Gary Drescher" wrote in message
...
"Jose" wrote in message
news
requiring absolute, unconditional deference to the FAA's interpretations

You'll never find that. However, it would certainly be sufficient to
find a case where an unreasonable definition was upheld.

It depends. That would still be troubling, but nowhere near as troubling
as the absolute-deference requirement that some people believe exists. The
important difference is that upholding a particular unreasonable
interpretation would not automatically generalize to requiring all
unreasonable interpretations to be upheld. But so far, no one here has
documented even a single instance of a blatantly unreasonable FAA
interpretation of the FARs being upheld.

--Gary

Jose
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