Originally Posted by
FDXLAG
If I were Ms. Cho I don't think I would ever want anyone from KAL touching my food again. Unopened nuts and unopened peachie Oscar would suffice until I got home and the household staff got their shot at poisoning me.
If a VP told me to go back, I would. Maybe the VP has a good reason? In this case it all worked out in the end, the guilty got punished.
But refusing such a request from a VP based on PIC authority would certainly be a grey area. A non-pilot manager certainly can't order me to do something unsafe or violate regs, but there's nothing unsafe or illegal about a RTG...and they're the boss when it comes to things like arbitrary termination of employees.
Once airborne, whole different story...they'd need to have a legit operational or safety issue to divert. And if they insisted, they might then become the safety issue.