NSF sobering thoughts.
One of the problems here is that many passengers have no choice but to use their own national airline and I suppose we tend to accept culture within culture. However we also live in a world where passengers of Western cultures seek low prices and some of the central european airlines offer just that. These passengers blindly assume that the standards of any airline will match those of their homeland and this is blatantly not so.
As seems to emerge here, it's not only the engineering and sophistication of the aircraft but the culture within some countries which leads to an arrogance in people with positions of responsibility and rank.
Passengers always have some degree of 'fear of flying' and publicity aimed at the travelling public will never be totally honest about the variation in risk depending on the carrier chosen. Of course it may be 'safer than crossing the road' but depends on which road you choose to cross.