From the same Wikipedia article that was just linked:
> "The aircraft suffered an airspeed indicator problem for its last four flights, including the flight to Denpasar. Thinking that it would fix the problem, the engineers in Bali then replaced one of the aircraft's AoA sensors, but the problem persisted on the penultimate flight [...] [the crew] recorded a twenty-degree difference between the readings of the left AoA sensor and the right sensor."
> "On 28 November, Indonesia investigators said the Lion Air jet was not airworthy on flight before crash."
Right, there were repeated problems with the angle of attack sensor. If I had to guess the sensor itself is and was just fine and the problem lay elsewhere in the pipeline.
More important though is that the 737 MAX differs wildly from earlier 737s in how much it relies on the AoA data. Mechanics and pilots not experienced with the MAX were probably operating under the (false) assumption that a bad alpha vane wouldn't be the end of the world. In fact displays indicating the angle of attack and warnings about disparity between the alpha vanes is an optional feature on the 737. It's considered that unimportant.
The key differences from earlier 737s are that the MAX uses the AoA data to calculate airspeed and that the MAX may use a single AoA input to try to kill you. I believe the former was disclosed, but considered how short the differences training is may have been easily overlooked. The latter, of course, was not disclosed until the crash.
Those are prior flights. The aircraft was fully repaired:
> The chief executive officer of Lion Air, Edward Sirait, said the aircraft had a "technical issue" on Sunday night, but this had been addressed in accordance with maintenance manuals issued by the manufacturer. Engineers had declared that the aircraft was ready for takeoff on the morning of the accident
So you still haven't supported your extraordinary claim that the aircraft was:
next flight reports that another, worse problem has appeared - bad enough that regulators have now said that the plane was "not airworthy" during this flight
maintenance "fixes" the problem
final flight impacts ocean at high speed
Your assertion is that since maintenance cleared the plane after the second fix, the plane must have been fine. To that, I point to the previous time maintenance cleared the plane, when it was demonstrably not fine.
No, my claim merely was that the quote does not make the claim about the specific flight (although I didn't word it quite clearly). The findings about bad maintenance culture certainly suggest that the plane wasn't fixed properly.
> "The aircraft suffered an airspeed indicator problem for its last four flights, including the flight to Denpasar. Thinking that it would fix the problem, the engineers in Bali then replaced one of the aircraft's AoA sensors, but the problem persisted on the penultimate flight [...] [the crew] recorded a twenty-degree difference between the readings of the left AoA sensor and the right sensor."
> "On 28 November, Indonesia investigators said the Lion Air jet was not airworthy on flight before crash."