I think the issue is not that the pilots are writing up mx items, rather, it is that they are waiting until THE LAST MINUTE to do it. I.E. writing up an item just prior to door close. Whereas before said item would have been written up well before boarding commenced. This can easily be done by doing one's walk around as the pax are almost boarding and - oh hey, look there is a chip in the landing light lens...better call mx! Versus doing the walk before the pax board and having mx fix said lens while the pax are boarding.
I'd like to agree with you, but it's hard to
not write something up "at the last minute" when you only have a 17 minute turn. Or if you're Southwest, 25 minutes. Even if you have a 45 minute turn, that doesn't leave a whole lot of time between everyone-off and start-of-boarding. 10, 15 minutes maybe? A lot of things can be fixed/swapped in that amount of time, but a lot of things can't be, either.
To me, the issue comes down to the definition of airworthiness. Since the FAA hasn't been kind enough to grace us with a useful definition, it comes down to personal interpretation. And
my personal interpretation of the regulations and case law is this: If
anything on the aircraft isn't meeting manufacturer design specifications, and it can't be deferred via an MEL, CDL, or NEF, then the aircraft is unairworthy. Does that mean I won't fly a plane with a slightly torn seat back pocket in 4C? Of course not. But, as BobDDuck put it,
Was it willfully negligent and illegal?
Yep.
So if the FAA decides to suspend my ticket because of said torn seat pocket, well, that was my call. If AMR's pilots aren't willing to make that same decision, who am I or anyone else to tell them otherwise?