The book, published on Tuesday, asserts that Malaysia Airlines had received a safety audit in 2013 that should have grounded all of their wide-body passenger planes, as their equipment would not let them report their position more frequently than at 30-minute intervals.
"The aircraft functioned just fine," Negroni, an aviation journalist and industry veteran told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "The airline couldn't track it. The airline could not track the aeroplanes as often as they were required to do."
Negroni believes that Malaysia owes the world, and particularly Australia, which has spent over $60 million on the search, an explanation. She is calling on the Turnbull government to demand that they do.
"I'm kind of fed up with everybody saying without the black box we're not going to know what happened to Malaysia 370," Negroni 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 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."
Negroni’s theory is that the captain left the cockpit and the plane experienced an emergency decompression.
"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."
A loss of oxygen triggers a condition called hypoxia, making people disoriented, as if they are drunk. Negroni believes that the officer in command may not have put his mask on fast enough to make rational decisions. If her theory is correct, it is likely that the passengers did not suffer long.
"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,” Negroni said. "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."
Flight MH370, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, less than an hour after takeoff. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
Investigators believe that the aircraft may have been unmanned and flown by the autopilot system in its final hours, before crashing into the ocean at a speed of up to 230 mph, after running out of fuel.
