Forget hypothetical scenarios; I've just remembered a real one!
A long, long time ago, when Whirly was just a young lass....
Well, OK, a few years ago, two of us set off in a C150 from Sleap, to spend a day flying round Wales. The weather forecast was fantastic, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky at Sleap. But as we approached the Welsh hills, barely ten minutes out, the cloud began to increase quite dramatically. I was P1, but we always make decisions together, as one does. And our conversation went something like this...
Whirly: I don't like the look of all this cloud.
Bloggs: Don't worry. it's OK.
Whirly: Well, maybe. But if it gets any worse it won't be.
Bloggs: It's only broken cloud; we can fly around it.
Whirly: (thinks) He flies a lot in Wales; maybe he's right. And he's been flying for years and years. But he doesn't have an awful lot of hours. And I don't even know him all that well. And why, why, why is it so hard to think clearly when you're at 2000 ft and cloud dodging?
Whirly: But if it gets worse, we could get hemmed in by it.
Bloggs: Well, let's go on a bit and see, shall we. It would be a shame to turn back now.
Whirly: But Welshpool's just round the corner. Why don't we drop in there for a coffee. This stuff should clear in an hour or so. And maybe it's OK, but it's not fun!
Bloggs: Fine with me, if you want to.
Whirly: (feeling very relieved, but also mildly guilty and wondering if she's an under-confident wimp) Oh, and don't worry; I'll pay Welshpool's landing fee.
OK, so landing fees didn't really come into it there. But they could have done, very easily. We really didn't know who was right without flying out over those mountains. I might have been over-cautious. There was no way of knowing for certain, and while it wasn't life-threatening or even a crucial decision, we had to decide what to do. The landing fee could have just been what swung the decision, and we could have flown out over those hills, found we couldn't get back, and joined the AAIB statistics.
It wouldn't have been sensible to do that, but it would have been very human.
Since I know I need to spell it out for some, I posted this as what I think is a fairly typical example of the way many pilots think when flying. We're imperfect human beings, most of us. I know some people on here claim not to be, but I'm afraid I can't aspire to those heights of non-mistake-making perfection, in aviation or anywhere else, and neither can many others. Decisions have to be made while airborne, often overloaded, without any 100% definite facts. There are a lot of things to consider. So let's get one tiny unimportant one, the landing fee, out of the equation. Why not, if it might save lives?
As it happened, we landed at Welshpool, paid the landing fee, had coffee, and an hour later left in glorious sunshine for a fantastic flying day.