An aviation industry veteran claims Malaysia Airlines knew the Boeing 777 that flew as MH370 was going to be hard to contact if it ever got into strife.

In her new book, The Crash Detectives, Christine Negroni said that in 2013, one year before the plane went missing, Malaysia Airlines was presented with a detailed safety audit that should have grounded all wide-bodied jets in the fleet.

Top managers were told the fleet did not meet the Malaysian Transport legislated standards for the frequency of ground-to-aircraft communications.

The shock advice in the audit report was to ground all wide-bodied jets until a technical refit, but it seems that never happened.

This seems to answer one of MH370’s greatest mysteries – why was the plane not equipped to report its position more frequently than 30-minute intervals?

“The aircraft functioned just fine,” said Ms Negroni, who worked in aviation insurance law before becoming a journalist with a speciality in aviation.

“The airline couldn’t track it. The airline could not track the aeroplanes as often as they were required to do.”

Malaysia Airlines has not denied the existence of the audit report, but will not comment on the claim it has been hiding that information.

Ms Negroni is calling on the Turnbull government to demand Malaysian authorities release more complete and transparent records on the aircraft that flew as MH370.

“I know who conducted it, I know what their results were, and I know who they presented it to,” she said.

Ms Negroni believes Malaysia has some explaining to do, especially to Australia, which has spent $60 million in a so-far futile search for the wreck of a plane that might not have been technically compliant to fly.

“I’m kind of fed up with everybody saying without the black box we’re not going to know what happened to Malaysia 370,” she said.

“[Even] with the black box you might not know what happened to Malaysia 370, but it’s a dodge to put all the eggs in that basket, it’s a dodge.

“It keeps everybody from going back to the Malaysians and saying, ‘Let’s see what you found out about the maintenance records, let’s see what you found out about the servicing of the crew oxygen canisters, let’s see what you found out about the last time the mask oxygen interface was inspected’.

“Were the masks working properly? We don’t even know.”

This “flap” is the latest piece of debris to be confirmed as coming from missing MH370. Photo: ATSB

Pilot ‘should’ve put his mask on first’

Ms Negroni believes MH370 experienced an emergency decompression at a critical moment when the captain was outside the cockpit.

“I believe the captain probably left the cockpit, leaving the first officer in command of the aircraft,” she said.

“By some mechanism, and I can’t tell you what, there was a sudden and rapid decompression of the aircraft, causing the first officer to respond inappropriately.”

It is terrifying and triggers a condition called hypoxia.

Families of those on board protest against a decision by China, Malaysia and Australia to suspend the search for the plane. Photo: Kyodo

Starved of oxygen, humans become disoriented and behave effectively like they are drunk.

Ms Negroni said the passengers would not have suffered, but the sole technical crewman left inside the cockpit may not have put on his oxygen mask fast enough to make rational decisions.

“So I think the first officer reached over to the transponder to dial in 7700, the emergency code, so that everyone around him would know that he’s having an emergency.

“He shouldn’t have done that first, he should’ve put his mask on first, but I don’t think he did.

“After he went to turn on the transponder, I think he inadvertently put it to standby which would have severed the connection, severed the ability of anyone on the ground to know this aircraft was Malaysia 370.”

Ms Negroni said rather than landing the plane at Penang, he turned west and started heading toward Langkawi.

“Why? I don’t know. But he did train at Langkawi, it would’ve been very familiar to him, and the runway’s longer at Langkawi than it is at Penang,” she said.

“So maybe in his addled brain he thought, ‘I’ve got a heavier plane here, more runway’s better’, but he didn’t land at Langkawi either.”

It was a fatal error that may have seen him irrationally steering not to safety, but on a ghostly journey to disaster.

Malaysia Airlines has been asked for a response but ABC have not received a reply.

-ABC