[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.

[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.