Well at least I kept the conversation lively!
Thanks to all, I have learned a lot from the discussion.
I didn't want to cede my position simply as a surrender to authority. Those who have posted here obviously have a greater education in physics than I, but unless you could explain it to me, I didn't want to just say "I guess you were right".
Yes I understand (and always have) that part of the forces an aircraft experiences are due to gravity and (lets see if I can phrase this to CPBs satisfaction), when acted upon by an additional force, the aircraft will undergo an acceleration. the pilot will then feel a force in the opposite direction, and the sum of the two are the "Apparent weight".
But unless you can explain what gravity IS, not just what it DOES, and if you conceed that you can't objectivley MEASURE (as opposed to OBSERVE) which force is which, I didn't necessarily agree that they can be seperated into different catagories. If this is operationalism, then I'm not prepared to abandon operationalism as being valid at least in the study of purely physical phenomena, and I don't think the literature PBL cited says I have to.