Oh, yes and when your a/c is burning and you want to get the thing on the ground pronto, you cant, not allowed. Why? Well the Emergency checklist (Law not an SOP) says you cant, as you are above the max landing weight. So land now or die waiting to get down to landing weight. That is the choice.
Perhaps it is an unwise assumption to assume most posters here have at least a basic understanding of aircraft operation and the command requirements that are inherent in that operation, but that aside, what a truly bizzare statement!
Laws are generally statutes that are imposed by national governments or by supranational authorities. Airplane checklists do not constitute documents enshrined in statute. They are a tool employed for the regular and safe operation of a particular aircraft. There use is to ensure that the procedures and tasks are followed in an understood and logical sequence so that items are not omitted. Checklists cannot be created for all conceivable situations, and it is implicit that their use may have to be combined or modified when the situation might warrant such action.
In the situation you describe, the checklists for the 2 Boeing airliners I have in front of me state quite unequivocally at various points:
Item 1. Diversion may be needed. Initiate a diversion to the nearest suitable airport while continuing the checklist. Consider an immediate landing if the smoke fire or fumes situation becomes uncontrollable and
consider an immediate landing. That is 4 times in 1 checklist. Nowhere does it even hint at not landing overweight. Indeed in the introductory narrative explaining the checklist construction and use it clearly states that:
If a smoke fire or fumes situation becomes uncontrollable, the flight crew should consider an immediate landing. Immediate landing implies immediate diversion to a runway. However, if the smoke, fire or fumes situation is severe enough, the flight crew should consider an overweight landing, a tailwing landing, an off-airport landing, or a ditching.
Notwithstanding this clear contradictory proof that your statement is nonsense, flight crews and certainly captains are expected to posess and display a developed sense of maturity, knowledge and situational awareness commensurate with the office they hold. In the example you proffer, that would clearly not be the case, on every level.
Now it is all very well you saying, "yes but the rule book can be discarded" in emergency. However, when one is conditioned to blindly accepting sop's/rules without question and be severely disciplined, should it not be so, the above scenario could creep in.
This would require a level of stupidity so breathtaking, that one wonders how the Commander ever got to be in that position. Standard operating procedures and checklists cannot be created for every conceivable situation or emergency, that must be fundamentally understood by anybody executing that position. The checklists are a tool to be properly employed during all normal and most non normal situations. In addition to the checklists, there are memory items and basic common sense and airmanship. The checklists are not a script to conduct the flight from start to finish. They are a tool to be used to ensure that routine items have been accomplished and that non routine items have been followed as per best advice and recommendation. None of this
ever prevents the captain from assessing the situation and using good judgment to determine the safest course of action.
If you blindly accept anything, you are clearly not ready to undertake the role you have been charged with. You should have a much better understanding than that.
You see conditioning to strict adherence can possibly lead to disaster, in certain circumstances. Or catasphrophe, remember Nurnberg? "I was was following orders" (rules/SOP's).
By now you will hopefully have got the point that pilots and certainly captains employ adherance to the standard operating procedures at all times when such adherance is required. This will (hopefully) be most of the time. That most certainly doesn't prevent them
ever from taking action that provides for the safest course of action in a given situation. I find it incredible that the point actually needs to made within a peer group. I cannot quite understand the correlation between a set of post war criminal trials for murder, rape and torture, with the common sense and maturity expected of an airline crew in the conduct of their day to day operations as well as the knowledge, understanding and behaviour expected of them in non normal situations ? Whilst mentioning torture, it might be fair to suggest that the quote above would intself constitute logic sufficiently tortured to justify its own trial at the Hague!
Yes I realise sop's must be in place and strict adherence to them is "required" but on the down side it does produce a robotic culture.
It produces a set of protocols that enables crews who may never have flown together before to have a template understanding of how a flight is to be routinely and safely conducted. It enables a crew to understand how each other should operate, and what the manufacturer, regulator and operator expect in the day to day operation of that aircraft. It is designed to enhance safety by understanding, knowledge and the application of sound judgement and common sense. It is designed to produce a routine culture and not a robotic one. Certainly routine is rarely exciting, but that is the objective of the excercise. If excitement is the personal goal, then this is the wrong profession.