B737-700
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 197; Flight Crew Type 12000
Situational Awareness; Workload; Distraction
ATC Issue All Types
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors
My First Officer (FO) for this flight was fairly new; it was his first time landing in [at this airport]; a challenging airport at any time. There was a lot of chatter on the radios; trying to sequence a high volume of aircraft in and out of the airport. In fact; the aircraft behind us was told 'expect either landing clearance or go-around instructions on short final.' We touched down uneventfully; and as we were about to transfer aircraft control; we were given complex; lengthy taxi instruction with reasoning and explanation included (non-standard). Although it was my turn to talk on the radios; I did not respond; because we were about to transfer aircraft control during this critical phase of flight.This tells me that I had to choose between answering the call or taking the aircraft and stopping it. When this happens; the FO was just highly tasked from the landing; and is now expected to read back and understand a taxi instruction he was not paying full attention to. It seemed to me the instructions had started earlier than normal; while we were still going about 80 knots. Since we had not responded; we were given the instructions again as we were exiting the runway. Now; in a lower task situation; it was much easier to understand; focus; and comply with the taxi instruction.This happens too often. It's not so much a problem if the Captain is landing; but when the FO is flying; we have to transfer aircraft control; at some point. This requires intricate coordination; communication; and call outs in the cockpit. It is a critical phase of flight and a high task situation that requires communication between the FO and Captain. Giving taxi instructions at the same time this is happening (while we are still going 80 knots) is unsafe and distracts us from doing something else that is way more important (stopping the aircraft safely). I usually include in my briefings; your leg (FO); and we get taxi instructions while we are rolling out; it is not critical that we sacrifice aircraft control to worry about answering; make the Tower repeat the clearance when we are both less task saturated enough to pay full attention to them. Can't ATC space out the aircraft more and accept a lower departure/arrival rate to alleviate some of the congestion? Doesn't it seem safer to accept a lower departure/arrival rate than to risk causing an incident; accident or a violation for clearing at the wrong taxiway or worse?
The B737 Captain was task-saturated during landing rollout and did not immediately respond to taxi instructions.