#22, interesting.
Re “… would have been able to stop the airplane on the runway if …”
There are many accident reports echoing this point; ‘the aircraft operated as designed’, … ‘the crew did not use it correctly’; blame, train. There is little consideration that even a well trained crew might not be able think of adjusting a system operation in critical situations.
After an event the investigator can calculate distances in slow time; during the event the crew would have to fully understand the capability of the aircraft in the actual conditions, not necessarily as reported, and compare achievable landing performance with runway remaining, a change of action if required.
We forget that humans are more often a limiting factor in an man-machine system, and that on occasion a good machine is insufficient to protect the human, be that operator, runway assessor, regulator, or designer.
There are many situations where the industry should not use the human as the safety back stop;- just because pilots are the last link in the chain does not mean that it is the best defence.
Generally additional safety margins are applied in these situations; landing distance margin.
Historically, the US system, manufacturer, regulator, operator, applied landing distance margins based on ‘actual’ data, where only a minimum addition was required. Other countries had a range of methods, some followed the US example, others - Europe, biased towards the AFM and larger factors.
Nowadays the industry is moving towards commonality with OLD/FOLD (although minimum factors still reign). There may be a pattern involving the 737 in this, but it could be difficult to identify amongst the many variables. A starting point could be what is taught by the manufacturer;- dispatchers use a performance manual (AFM data), flight crews the FCOM (actual data).