Knot-in-your-throat airports to land at.....

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

54. It's called EMAS, and it does work,

except if you get your plane stuck in the EMAS there's hell to pay getting it out. You can't just taxi out of it. Better to have runways that aren't so damn short that there's a likelihood you're going to need the EMAS.

Airlines calculate takeoff weights to consider runway lengths to ensure they have a "balanced field" - in other words, if you have to do an RTO (normally before 80 kts, up to 100 kts under certain fairly dire circumstances) you aren't so heavy that you can't stop by the end of the runway (without going into the overrun). But stuff happens. Brakes fail; runway conditions can change; or if your approach is unstable and you land long - there you are, off the runway, in the weeds or in the EMAS. MDW's runways are legal, but there's little room for error.