Yeah, that’s what I thought, and it’s probably exactly how people bust on “judgment.” Not because of some subjective idea of whose judgment is better than whose, but because the applicant tried to ******** the examiner by doing or not doing something based on judgement, and when the examiner probed further to find out what specific risks they were mitigating, the applicant didn’t have a clue.
Similar to a pilot I used to fly with who stated that the approach into Aspen was inherently unsafe, and even though we used higher minimums (basically the FAF), “you’ll never fly that approach with me in the airplane.” Upon further probing, he threw out the “judgment” card: “my job is to mitigate risk.” “Ok, what risk are you mitigating?”
It finally came down to, “what if you go missed and forget to turn?” He didn’t have a problem with the approaches at the home airport that would make one just as dead if you forgot to turn on the miss, so his “judgment” argument was clearly a smokescreen, and the ACS has specific, objective, tasks for risk management on instrument approaches.
A lot of people seem to think “judgment” is a Get Out Of Jail Free card. That’s not its purpose.
If anything, the PTS was more subjective, since ADM and risk management were part of the Special Emphasis Areas, and didn’t have specific associated tasks, so the bust would be on the maneuver itself, not a risk management element.