Danny,
I couldn't agree more. It is preprogrammed in just about every pilots brain to operate safely (Hence the fact that people get so heated over discussions like these). Flight Ops in any company will have the same lean. It is entirely inappropriate to point the finger of blame at RYR's pilots or individual Ops departments.
What must be recognised is that the company culture is moving us all back in time. People must realise that corporate decisions which seem miles removed from day to day operations can have the most discreet yet signifcant effects on how people perform their tasks. RYR management do not appear to be willing or perhaps even capable of accepting that a dictatorial management style, while it will keep shareholders very happy for a while, can push the whole operation closer and closer to the edge.
As I said in another forum on a similar topic: If you stretch 50 pieces of metal to their theoretical limits, some will be fine, some will be at breaking point and some will have broken already. In the past, companies have used margins in all areas of their operations to maintain a high level of safety. The closer you get to the limits, the smaller your margins, the closer you are to disaster.
A boss that says his airline can withstand 2 hull losses, obviously has looked at safety as nothing more than a financial tool. He has seen that he can reduce the margin in order to save money and increase profits while calculating that the increased risk is still financially and economically manageable. It is a backwards trend. Not modern, forward thinking management.