on flight before the crash. After which it was repaired, and sent on the fatal flight.

It was also repaired before the previous flight.

It goes like this:

several flights report problem

maintenance "fixes" the problem

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.

Indeed, in a completely different flight than the one we're discussing.