Also, I don’t think that the case against Boeing is all that “rock-solid.” With 5000 planes in production over 30 years, this seems to be the first one that didn’t do what it was supposed to do. I have sifted through American and European incident reports going all the way back to 1978, where pressurization problems caused the pilots to lower altitude or land, but these incidents didn’t cause the plane to crash. In fact, most of the incidents referred to failure of a particular part, such as outflow valve, cabin pressure controller, or open door or faulty seal. The other failures during climb or cruise were due to pilots’ failure to reconfigure after a bleeds-off takeoff.
I have also carefully looked through the checklists, past and present, and the instructions seem pretty clear and straightforward and always have. In fact, even though the recently revised checklist specifically states that the pressurization mode selector should be set to “Auto,” if pilots elect to do a bleeds-off takeoff, they will still have to reconfigure the bleeds, and that is what has been overlooked, even though it has been on the non-normal checklist from the beginning
The one big change is the armoured door. The cabin crew can no longer get O2 to an unconscious flight crew without the door code. Boeing's lawyers will be pointing out that other operators' SOPs have the door code checked before takeoff.