Operating procedure differences among airlines

[The guy in 2a]

A recent Wall St Journal article looked at non-battery issues with the 787 that were analyzed by Boeing while the planes were grounded. One conclusion, only delicately hinted at, was that different airlines' own procedures were having an impact on variations in dispatch reliability --

"United scored the lowest in overall reliability by some measures, with disruptions to about one in 10 Dreamliner flights, and had the highest number of so-called nuisance messages that caused delays. Such messages "may indicate poor airline familiarity" with the vagaries of the 787 and its all-new technology, according to the Boeing report." ANA, by comparison, did not report these issues at such a high rate.

This got me wondering -- FAA certification all but requires airlines to operate with very little sharing or comparison of procedures amongst themselves. So, operating in isolation, what is United good at? What is it not so good at?

More broadly, would an airline's employees even know about these differences? Do certain things become known through jumpseating?
Are other airlines known to stand out for any of their practices? (e.g. until one plane blew up, TWA was known for meticulous maintenance of their 747-100s and -200s)

Where there any surprises discovered when United and Continental merged under one certificate and had to analyze and choose one way or the other for thousands of tasks and situations?

My point here is not to criticize. I'm just curious.

[Agaricus bisporus]

Differences in record-keeping might affect general stats like that. If airline A makes a tech log entry every time a computer is reset and Airline B just resets it and makes no record then one looks as of it had computer maintenance problems while the other has none.

An engineering culture that says "We've done it this way on every other Scruggs Aerospace jet we've ever owned so we'll do the same with this one" is going to turn up different stats to the company that says, "lets see if there's a new/partiular way of doing it on this plane".

Just a couple of ideas that might bring up differences. There will be many other perfectly good ones too. Not sure you can read anything into such a fuzzy statement anyway.