Rainboe, speaking as a humble SLF, can I say I think the journalist-bashing in these forums is excessive. Yes, of course there's plenty of uninformed drivel written about the industry and splashed in full colour in the newspapers, and of course much of this nonsense is very frustrating reading for industry professionals, and so fair dibs for those who vent their frustration on these forums. But surely you accept that you are happy to live in a free country where press enquiry has very few limits, and where you as a citizen and a consumer regularly benefit from the work carried out by investigative journalists? What would you have said if Ian had been a journalist investigating Farepak a year ago and you were a professional in the consumer finance industry at that time - would you have said that the industry self-regulation was going well, with precious few negative incidents, and therefore journalists should simply keep out? As George Orwell said, "journalism is a profession not to be despised", however much it rummages in the gutter.
As to Ian's question itself, I think it is a perfectly respectable one, although the positive safety record of Southwest Airlines over many years seems to suggest at least anecdotal evidence that there is no correlation between short turnarounds and safety. Whether Ryanair or any specific carrier has a good safety culture is anyone's guess, although as a pax I've always suspected it's the legacy carriers who fly closer to the safety line - but then again what do I know?