GK340, the points you have raised are excellent and were exactly what I was thinking when I was reading the book.
BA and BALPA handled this dreadfully. Were Cpt Eric Moody and the rest of his crew treated like this by BA after their incident back in 1982? Were Cpt Tim Lancaster, F/O Alastair Atchison and the rest of their crew treated like this by BA after their incident back in 1990?
As for your point about US Airways 1549 - I did initially think about that. However, with the US Airways incident, it was far more obvious to the public at the time that it was not pilot error, whereas with BA 038 it was not absolutely known what the problem was and whether the crew had made a slip up during the flight.
I also wondered why the ATC tapes were released to the public for the US Airways flight and not BA flight. Could somebody answer this? I'm assuming (and most likely wrong) that it was because there were two mistakes (understable given the pressure!!!!!) by Pete on the BA ATC tapes - even though they were very minor.