I can't say I'm oversly surprised about the lax behaviour. Very few people tend to do their jobs 100% every day. That being said, I would not expect BA, or even EasyJet to compromise safety and passenger comfort in such a way.

I have never flow Ryanair yet. This had nothing to do with their no frills attitude, purely because timings or whatever did not suit me at the time.

I will never fly with them now.

It would be interesting tho, to see the same thing done to BA or BMI.