My guess is that the FR captain was using such a system and that was why he was able to apologise when he realised that the lights were still to Taxi as he taxied in.
When I last flew for said Company they did have an SOP wrt use of landing lights when cleared for take off or cleared to land.
Also, as has been said previously, the SOP for 121.5 MHz was to monitor during cruise.
Notwithstanding that one would consider use of 121.5 MHz in the event of Comms Failure on normal ATC freqs.
The newspaper article is full of the usual journo sensationalism so nothing new there.