He is right about one thing - looking at the maintenance logbook is a standard part of any preflight. If you looked at the logbook and saw that the maintenance

He is right about one thing - looking at the maintenance logbook is a standard part of any preflight. If you looked at the logbook and saw that the maintenance team had been dueling with the MCAS system and that it had activated inappropriately on four prior occasions, that really should have been at the front of their minds. It seriously is a standard heads-up to alert you to any potential issues that might occur with the aircraft. Inoperative systems, etc. Even in general aviation, if you look at the logbook and see this is the first time this aircraft has flown since an engine teardown, you want to be aware of that in the light of monitoring your engine's readouts. If you suddenly see that the oil pressure is dropping or something, that's something you would immediately want to take seriously. Recent maintenance can be the difference between "I'll have the mechanic look at that when I get back" and immediately taking corrective action. There was a plane (Cessna iirc) nearby me that went down from a similar issue. When you change the oil there is a drain tube and some leftover oil tends to drip out all over the cowling. The mechanic apparently got in the habit of rolling up some paper towel and shoving it in the drain tube to absorb the drips. Well, this time he forgot to close the drain cock. It held enough pressure to take off apparently, then blew out in-flight and the engine seized. You gotta watch for that stuff, first person to fly an aircraft after a maintenance issue needs to be aware of it. (immediately taking corrective action is safer but planes are complex and if you immediately turned around the first time an engine ran a little hot you'd never get anywhere. They have redundant systems for a reason, and if anything commercial airliners are even more redundant and even more willing to fly with inoperative non-essential equipment, because there's so much money on the line. Commercial airliners fly with equipment that's broken literally all the time, there is very probably broken equipment on any given flight you take... more like probably several pieces broken.) Not to say that the pilots here didn't do everything right... we don't know yet either way. Boeing certainly has some 'splaining to do regardless, there are design flaws here that apparently have caused this problem to occur quite frequently. Just because you hope the pilots would have caught it doesn't mean you want to tempt fate repeatedly.