[bjohnson225]

"Alaska Airlines placed restrictions on the Boeing plane involved in a dramatic mid-air blowout after pressurisation warnings in the days before Friday's incident, investigators say."

Boeing absolutely deserve every single bit of the criticism they get for the Max, but it's worth keeping in mind that in this instance Alaska possibly share some of the responsibility for flying an aircraft with known issues.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67909417

[ViewTrick1002]

Every single aircraft flies with inoperative parts and known issues deferred until the next maintenance period.

[wavemode]

The pressurization warning was a sensor glitch unrelated to the door plug blowout. Even if Alaska had fixed the pressure sensors the door still would have blown out. So I don't see what responsibility they share in the incident.

[bjohnson225]

Do you have a source for that? Google returns nothing of the kind.

[wavemode]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/united-finds-bolts-need...

> On Sunday, the NTSB reported that Alaska Airlines had previously restricted this particular plane from long flights over water, specifically to Hawaii, because an auto pressurization alert light that had illuminated during three prior flights, twice in the days leading up to Friday.

> But aviation experts told NBC News on Monday that based on the information provided thus far by federal authorities the light was going off as the result of a computer glitch of some kind and not indicating there was a mechanical problem on the plane.

> "It’s not unusual in the aviation world for there to be issues with warning lights and most of the time the issue is with the warning light itself," Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB investigator. "It’s not like Alaska Airlines ignored it. The fact that it restricted this plane from making flights over water while they were looking into this warning lights issue points to a robust safety culture."

> John Cox, who weighs-in regularly on aviation issues for NBC News, agreed.

> "The pressurization system, from what I’ve read, was acting normally," said Cox, who said he flew Boeing 737's for 15 years. "This appears to be more a sensor problem. But Alaska Airlines, being a conservative airline, said this has happened a couple times now and we need to look into, but let’s not do that over the Pacific Ocean."

> Homendy said at Monday night's news conference that it does appear the auto pressurization system and its alerts were not involved in Friday night's accident, although she cautioned that the investigation was ongoing.

[Dalewyn]

It would depend on what the guidelines and other requirements say with regards to such warnings. It definitely is not a good impression for Alaska for most people, though.

[XorNot]

Right, which is why air crash/incident investigations look at all causes. It would be absolutely the wrong conclusion from this to say "the problem is solely Boeing".

The problem can be Boeing, Alaska Airlines and the regulatory system under which they operate since an intervention at any level here would've prevented the incident: Boeing should be doing their job properly, but Alaska Airlines could've done more then the minimum with a plane displaying persistent pressurization problems, and the regulations shouldn't have allowed them to get an exemption to fly with a persistent issue like this on their records since the mitigation wasn't remotely safe.

[physicsguy]

What do you expect them to do? Replacing a whole fleet of aircraft takes years.

[bjohnson225]

Not fly the specific aircraft which had three pressurisation warnings in the days prior to incident until they've carried out some checks? They were serious enough that they decided it wasn't safe to fly that plane over water.

Maybe the actions of Alaska Airlines were absolutely fine, but the CEO passing all the blame to Boeing before the incident report is understandable, but a little off to me.

[andix]

Planes constantly have numerous issues. And there are processes in place on how to deal with them. It seems like the followed all the necessary processes and even did additional non-required steps.

[blantonl]

It was already determined that the pressurization warnings the aircraft received were irrelevant to the issue at hand.

[bjohnson225]

Source?

Looking on Google the closest I can find to your claim is the NTSB chair saying it might not be related after she gave out the details of the previous warning lights (as you'd expect in her position before the investigation has completed).

[stevehawk]

but that's because if they flew over water and had a depressurization event then the plane and everyone on it dies. There aren't a lot of airports between the continental US and Hawaii and jets burn an insane amount of fuel at 10,000' MSL, which almost guarantees a water landing. However, over land, the plane can simply divert and land. And at the time of the incident, Alaska believes the problem was with the light/sensor and not the structure.