pol--actually I agree with you --just should have worded my response more clearly!!
Basically, my idea is to pass the act of the decision onwords. In this example, if you need fuel you are going to take it but the decision to actually offload the bags/pax has to be made by the company which, I think, is fair enough. The co. says no to the offload then you give them the options---OK, if we don't have the fuel I don't feel comfortable and a diversion is likely. I would even talk personally SNMC and let them know that I WANT that fuel but the decision is theirs (maybe add that you will not be using discretion either).
This happened all summer with SFO and the co. elected for the tech stops. Their call. Where it gets frustrating is that the SFO flight can be planned with a tech stop and, with delays, the duty can go to 22 hours.
In any case, in most situation it works well to to give the guys in ops choices you are comfortable with and let them make the decision. If it ever comes back to you then you can say THEY made the call.
Of course, this can be done quite deviously as well
