ShortfinalFred: you are right...
But the only way to prevent the same thing happening to the airline industry as what happened to the shipping industry are clear and common rules of conduct for pilots and airlines.
The aviation world is not going to accept aircrafts falling out of the sky too often because of bad training or stressed out pilots. I'm not too affraid of that.
If there would be a major aircrash in europe every month, people would stop flying at the same amout that they are now. And if this would be because of the crew, this would lead to some serious regulation changes and in order to continue flying the airlines would have to adapt to those new rules...
The rules are already hard on airline budgets and companies like Ryan are pushing the rules to their limits. This is ok, as long as no accidents happen...