Who else (short of the CEO) would you consider more qualified to comment on the safety culture in a company?

Pilots seem uniquely qualified to judge whether a company is prioritizing safety or short-term profit.

For example, a pilot will know whether the company incentivizes pilots to overlook issues to make a flight happen or whether it encourages a safety culture of speaking up and staying on the ground when something comes up, or whether they fly with the absolute minimum of fuel permitted or a little bit more (and whether that is a safety issue or not).

In Ryanair's case that bias may run in the opposite direction to that which you imply: https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cqwdgxed80gt/ryanair-pilots-...

I dunno, there's some jobs you see from the inside you think "wow, this is a disaster" but from the outside it looks fine because that's what the company projects. (Anecdotally, a friend of mine gets horror stories from his brother, who's a mechanic with a very large airline)