Very true atatacs. Madness indeed. Just a lowly PPL myself but I do some legal consulting in my profession of Anesthesiology as an expert witness in malpractice. Hubris can be a real problem in Medicine as well as Aviation. IMHO these "cowboys" illustrated classic normalization of deviance: they got away with skeletal flight planning by being careless/reckless with fuel margins many times in the past on similar routing. The added "prestige" of taking this team and perhaps extra weight made for an even greater recklessness on their part. Utter madness and completely preventable.