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From time to time I have declined to accept an aircraft inspite of the MEL.
Sorry, I don't work at an airline that operates like that, if the aircraft is legal, why would you turn down the flight?
Well, i think Intruders answer covered that one. (Thanks Intruder)
You say that the aircraft is more unsafe, maybe you are smarter than the aircraft manufacturer?
Well, I'm certainly the guy that gets killed if they are wrong.
I certainly don't make a habit of declining to fly based on the MEL. I think maybe two or three times in my career. I remember one situation well; two fairly serious snags, both manageable in isolation, but the two, combined with the circumstances, were clearly unsafe. Ops jumped up and down when I said no, and werent interested in listening to why, and phoned the Chief Pilot with a "CPB won't fly" whine, he called me, I explained the circumstances (which took about 15 seconds), he said "too right" and "explained" the situation to them.
And tbh, what is it with the 'godlike' omniscience that some pilots ascribe to manufacturers anyway. People make mistakes, manufacturers and their staff are no exception. You ought to bear in mind that when a new aircraft gets launched to its first customer, there really isn't a lot of practical day to day experience around in flying the thing. Its really touching that you think the manufacturers and test pilots have considered every combination of failures but they haven't, thats why the responsibility for interpreting the MEL rests with the Captain, not some dude in Ops.
Am I smarter than the manufacturer? Overall, probably not. But I do hold an engineering degree as well as an ATPL, and two heads are better than one (or N+1 is better than N). In my current role I do talk to the chief test pilot at a major manufacturer on a fairly regular basis about systems failure procedures and quite often I query him about the MEL and Abnormal checklists. Those conversations (very occaisionally) have led to changes in procedures. So, you see, the manufactures use feedback from the line.
pb