'I hear nothing' HOGAN !!!
Hi Amp, mate its not so much a 'sack first then ask questions later' culture,its more of a lack of oversight of their ramp activity. The culture amongst some of their ground handling contractors is that they quite simply dont report damage when they cause it, partly due to fear of reprisal and partly due to simply not giving a s..t in general.
I reiterate that this is not the case among all of the lads toughing it out on the ramp, but it does exist. The safety department is too small and understaffed for the size of the operation, internal audits of third party contractors are basically non existent ( domestically ), and as far as international audits go, well they have flown to some international ports now for up to 30 months or so without a single ramp audit taking place.
In reality nothing much has changed over the past thirty years, the only attention paid to an operation is up the front of the plane in the flight deck. Nobody looks at the nuts and bolts of an airline operation to see what is actually going on - out of sight out of mind ! Sad but true.