Max autobrakes is not as effective as full manual braking.
Boeing will tell you that max autobrakes on the 737 is not as effective as full manual braking for shorter stopping distance. The autobrakes "ramp up" slowly and don't provide full system pressure to the anti-skid valves and work to provide a set deceleration in conjunction with the thrust reversers. FULL and IMMEDIATE 3,000PSI brake pressure ONLY occurs in RTO. If you PLAN to use manual full braking immediately, you'll actually stop in a shorter distance. If you don't know how, or feel you can't do that, you are certainly better off with auto-brakes. NTSB has asked Boeing to do tests in the past and THOSE WERE THE RESULTS. Again, it's sort of scary seeing how confidentily pilots post things when in fact, they are wrong ....just like CNN does. One has to rememeber this internet site is not necessarily factual or the official Boeing or NTSB site.
Not if you PLAN to use perfectly techniqued manual brakes, it only applies if you DO!! If the runway condition is "fair", would it then follow that the deceleration rate of max would be in excess of what the runway will physically allow? Furthermore, there is no problem with braking being initiated by the autobrakes and then for the pilot to take over. In that case, the braking would be no worse than what the pilot would have done without autobrakes, but potentially better.
Now to the issue of how much Gary "cares". Accidents happen. It's a fact of life. The issue now is that SWA made affirmative actions that potentially reduced safety. SWA CHOSE to serve midway. They did it to SAVE MONEY. No if ands or buts. SWA CHOSE to disable the autobrakes. They did it to save moeny. SWA CHOSE to disable the autothrottles, they did it to save money. SWA CHOSE to forego the autoland feature and instead installed a HUD, and required HUMANS to handfly the approach to cat III mins. Humans who have bad days. Humans who could possibly intimidate the F/O from saying "go around". Humans who may have some unknown medical condition. The HUD wasn't installed to make the pilots feel "cool", that's what the leather jackets are for. The HUD's were installed to SAVE MONEY. Now if you accept the potential decrease in safety of flying into an extremely constricted airport with very short runways so that you can save a little coin or to save some time, great, fine, I don't care. But in this case you killed a kid who had absolutely nothing to do with it. They were just driving down the road. IF, and it is a BIG if, it is found that had SWA used autobrakes, or autoland, or not even been operating into this field, who should pay and how much? Should SWA be ALLOWED to pay, and move on, doing things like they were always done, and consider it in a cost benefit equation of getting you cheaper tickets? Ford tried that with the Pinto. Yup, Gary has been way upfront on this. Personally I think it's with good reason. This could be a HUGE turning point. This could cause a change in the way SWA does EVERYTHING, and the fields they are allowed to operate into. Again, accidents happen, metal bends, it's not a perfect world, and people make mistakes, but when people make decisions, knowing full well that the decision has the potential to hurt people, then they'd better be prepared to pay the full price when the piper comes, and that includes the potentialy astronomical punative damages to encourage them to re-examine the emphasis on "cost control"
