Flight 370: it's time the airlines live-streamed their flight data

Whatever the reason for the plane's disappearance, waiting for the black box to be discovered is crazy

Crispin Black

THERE is probably a perfectly simple explanation for the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. The smart money appears to be on some kind of gradual decompression – a fault causes an aeroplane to leak breathable air so slowly out of the cabin that the pilots don’t realise they have a problem until it’s too late, when oxygen starvation prevents them from taking any decisions.

This would account for the plane drifting off course: Malaysian air force radar apparently picked up the flight off the Thai resort island of Phuket, hundreds of miles from where it should have been. Rolls-Royce have in-flight data suggesting the planes engines were working for four hours after its last radio-check with Kuala Lumpur control.

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is a former Welsh Guards lieutenant colonel and intelligence analyst for the British government's Joint Intelligence Committee. His book, 7-7: What Went Wrong, was one of the first to be published after the London bombings in July 2005.