Moosp,
I think you will find that Corporate safety became involved after a complaint or a question was raised as to the safety of the operation. Is that not the function of the Safety Department? If CAD/FAA were to ask questions would not the first one be what is the result of your company's safety/flight ops department investigation? If the aircraft is operated outside of SOPs that is the function of a safety investigation or at least one of flight ops.
Yes we all think it looks great and most of us will admit to having done the same at some stage in our careers but do you think if we had been found out the outcome would have been any different. Maybe not the sack but certainly disciplanary action would have been taken by every employer that I have worked for.
I think the real question that should be asked is what happened on the previous five delivery flights and if this hadn't happened where would the next delivery flight have ended, at the end of the runway perhaps?