Dear Brian
Dear Brian,
Well its been an interesting week to say the least, all vestiges of a new broom or breath of fresh air have been well and truly dispelled, exactly as many predicted including most regular posters on here.
I believe it must be clear to you by now that our employer has very little interest in safety if it impacts negatively on the bottom line or worse, shows how inept the standard of management is, a state of affairs I'm certain a great many of my colleagues will have communicated to you at various moments.
The latest level of "acceptance" you have described is yet another erosion in safety standards masquerading its legitimacy behind a flawed and some might infer corrupt process, moreover its also clear that scant regard has been paid to the previous lessons that were learnt along with the more recent lessons relating to cumulative fatigue, safety margins and pilot retention.
As ever, pilots being pilots, the vast majority will attempt to complete the mission, the vast majority will complete the mission successfully, until one crew doesn't and that Brian is a great deal closer to occurring on your watch.
Make no mistake, if you continue to roll the dice and reduce margins luck eventually runs out.
I hope Brian that you can see that amongst the flight-crews who are still here, you can see a determination to maintain professional standards and keep doing the job to the best of our abilities, I also hope you can now see that the goodwill you sought to foster has in one decision been lost.
Best of Luck.