Oh, and by the way...he says that the "sliding off of the end of the runway" incident at KMDW wasn't the pilot's fault.
See the quote from your above post below:
Reasoning: MDW has short runways, the weather was awful, the runway was slick from the snow, etc. The pilot DID use autobrakes, and in fact he set the dial to about 3, I think. The breaking action just wasn't good enough. He also landed too far down the runway. The only thing that is still up in dispute concerning the pilot is: why didn't he divert?
1) Midway's longest runway is 6500 feet. This isn't all that short for a B737 in normal conditions, but the pilot tried landing there in a snowstorm on a wet runway with a below normal breaking action (I can't give you an exact because I can't remember what the breaking action was reported as). The plane landed on 31C, MDW's longest runway. Also be advised that as soon as the pilot initiates manual braking, the autobrake system kicks off. If, in fact, the pilots pressed as hard as they could, the autobrake system would have been found in the reset position and no autobraking would have been used after that time.
Your reasons basically state how it WAS the pilot's fault.
He landed on a runway that was much too short for him in the conditions that were present at the field. I have no idea why the pilot did not divert, and I'm sure he won't be flying a Southwest trip anytime soon.
I'm not sure what SWA's Ops specs state, but they don't seem to like to divert to non-SWA airports. For example, when PVD/G90 closed [on Wed.] at 12AM and a SWA 737 claimed they needed them to safely land at Providence, they diverted back to their orgin; BWI. Although they service BDL (a short 57nm distance away), they decided to go back to Baltimore. I don't know why the decision was made to go back all that way, but it may have something to do with Southwest's ops specs. It beats me....but I know that if there was not a specific rule that stated SWA couldn't divert to a closer airport, then the pilot pretty much made a poor judgement call to return to BWI. I understand though, that I can't make such a bold statement with such limited knowledge of the situation. If anyone has any info on that one, feel free to post it.