vilas: I hear what you are saying however rigid blind adherence to SOPs may or may not ensure we are safe! Just look at how often the manufactures change their SOPs due to operational experience! ( Airbus are particularly bad for this IMHO ) All I was pointing out was that the brake wear pins are simply a device to assess brake pad wear and that it is actually possible to determine that from the markings left by the pins during normal operations. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that the brake wear be not examined just that sometimes SOPs may be impractical.
I suspect we may not see "eye to eye" on this matter! It is difficult to see how safety critical it may be to know that one has 10 landings left on a brake unit versus 100 left. One commonly sees widely different wear states on brake units due to partial replacements of individual units.