I'm concerned this ruling will lead to grief, with crew under pressure to operate unsafe aircraft. With airline margins being just a few euros per passenger this is not helpful.
All the more so because we have now moved away entirely from the original intention of the compensation provisions in R261 - to deter airlines from bumping overbooked passengers and for cancelling underbooked flights - or to 'punish' them if they did so. In both cases the number of passengers entitled to compensation would be relatively small. Now we are talking about a potential liability per delayed roundtrip in excess of half a million Euro.