Just a further thought or two to get this back on track.....
Do not ever make the mistake of using anecdotes or one-off events to justify a point of view or to condemn an operation. This is exactly the strategy used by amateur managers who've never been near the pointy end of things whether on the ramp, the cabin or the cockpit.
The whole point of having black letter rules is that someone will always have an anecdote or dodgy "data" to justify what they want to do. For example let's say that a carrier were to have notoriously non-compliant crew rest facilities on a long haul type and were to use the existence of that non-compliant facility to justify horrible duty schedule with long back of the clock operations. And lets say that the safety and ops managers were to get very very defensive when questioned about the fact that other than being better than standing-up, the facilities provided for "rest" meet no other requirement of the FOM or the CARs or even the exemption to the CARs. Let's say their response were to be "we're developing a fatigue management system and in any case we've had very very few written complaints". Are they off the hook because on any given day the system vaguely seems to work? NOT AT ALL. The regulations for crew rest are stark and easily understood. Management (and crews) are required to follow the law, not "whatever works on any given day".
If the Quality system cannot pick up a 10kg overload who's to say that it could pick up 100 kg or 10,000 kg? Not possible. That's why it is a condition of getting and maintaining an AOC that the Quality system works. Otherwise it's like flying an approach with either 4 reds or 4 whites on the PAPI. You no longer have any guidance as to your glide-slope and are reduced to guessing.
Take-home message is that having a safety and quality system that works some of the time for some of the operation is like using a contaminated syringe. You have no idea at all what might happen next.
Sorry for the sermon....this stuff can cost lives and the fact that it didn't in the case of the 330 doesn't in any way diminish the significance of the lapse in quality assurance.
Safe flying
Sherm