How dumb!! There's cx for you, a whole a lot of barking about SOPs to the point of circus atmosphere 'anality' and then a parallel atmosphere of circus atmosphere 'anything goes' whenever it suits whoever at the moment. The basic meaning of standardization is lost here. The basic reason why SOPs are important is lost here. They treat it as if it's just for show around here, keeping up appearances and not much more. It starts with a highly non-standard and very inefficient training product (which they know about and are trying to fix thankfully) and it goes surprisingly far.
No I don't think the flyby was that dangerous, and making a low approach or low pass is perfectly fine as long as you have tower's approval as far as the FAA is concerned. Ref. AIM 4-3-12
The most often spoken words before accidents are "WATCH THIS" which is obviously spoken loudly just before putting on shows like this. In an airline operation environment putting on a show is a very stupid thing and it destroys years of effort put into SOPs which are the corner stone of each airline's safety record.
I'm well aware of the absolute ignorance that exists among my colleagues (Industry wide) about aviation accident causes. Not too many learn from others' mistakes by reading official accident reports. Each organization plays the crucial role in achieving, establishing and maintaining a high level of safety... it cannot be left to each individual to set their own, that's been proven to be disasterous for the airlines and military just the same.
There's nothing wrong with pushing the envelope, but it has to be done in an organised manner with prior planning and appropriate training. A line pilot or one who has made it to management level gets no training or knowledge at any point of his/her career which would qualify him/her as a test pilot.
The whole system depends on leading by examples or making examples of people.