The decision by Alaska Airlines to stop flying one of its planes over the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii due to warnings from a cabin-pressurization system — yet keep flying it over land — is raising questions about whether the jet should have been in the air at all.

A North Dakota state senator took off from a remote Utah airport last month with his wife and two young sons in the plane without the runway lights on a dark night with no moonlight and crashed just a minute later killing everyone aboard.