Indeed, and he wasn't the only witness to make that observation. Yet still they maintain another view.....................The phrase 'orchestrated litany of lies' springs to mind.
Aviation has always been an example for other industries because of it's open reporting/investigating culture and how it collectively accepts and learns from it's mistakes. Granted this lesson had been learnt a fair few times but you'd like to think that a commercial operator would take it on the chin, accept responsibility and take steps to raise the safety bar.
The company denials of the report are surely an exercise purely to deal with public perception (probably not a bad ploy considering CAA's tribulations over the past few months). This would be because any person even minutely associated with aviation (after reading the report and/or talking to people who were there) I think would have serious problems accepting the company's position.