Years ago as an FO for years (10) on this fleet, this MEL condition was the case on at least several ships, but I don't remember how many. These old planes have no autobrakes. Sometimes on final approach with the gear down, we saw an anti-skid light illuminate, and if resetting the switch did no good (or barely pulling out on the gear handle/pulling/resetting the circuit breaker), we switched it back to off and just went pretty easy on the brakes, especially if it was on just one side. It never happened on final to a wet or slippery runway, somehow.
As Captain, I've only seen this MEL a very few times, and while operating to airports with long runways. It has been my good fortune not to discover such an aircraft with this type of "deferred maintenance" on a leg into a fairly short and wet runway, or with a gusty crosswind, so far. Before such a flight, I would call Dispatch, after chatting with the FO about his/her opinion, and tell him that I'm not flying it unless it is repaired and "ground checks" good. I'm wondering about fleet reliability after our upper management decides to outsource much more of our maintenance. With outsourcing, only the Maint. Supervisor has to be FAA-licensed, but not the other mechanics/engineers, who all must be supervised (but then, maybe their families won't normally fly on airline ABC, whereas a given airline's OWN mechanics know that their company normally carries their families...)
. But that is another topic .
