The Egyptair hijacking today has turned out to be a relatively benign event by comparison with what the world’s instant media was preparing its audience for – an attack by Daesh.

The flight was scheduled from Alexandria, Egypt, to Cairo, but a passenger claimed to be wearing a suicide vest and wanted to go to Cyprus, so the captain did what he asked and flew him to Larnaca.

This takes aviation back to the pre-9/11 security stone-age. The captain should have been able to have sufficient faith in the airport security system to know that the claim to be wearing a suicide vest or belt was a hoax, and thus to have refused the request and ordered the cabin crew to restrain the passenger.

The trouble for this Egyptair captain is that he did not have the necessary faith in the Egyptian security system to deny the hijacker his demand, and the reason he didn’t is because of the successful sabotage of a Russian Metrojet Airbus A321 out of Sharm el-Sheikh in late October last year. Somebody got explosives on board, they were detonated over Sinai, and all on board were killed. So this captain’s decision not to risk the passengers is understandable.

It may be that Egypt has beefed up its airport security since Sharm el-Sheikh – especially the screening of employees as well as passengers, but if the crew’s faith in the security system is still not there, hijackers will continue to be able to make demands on aircraft commanders, and the captains, like this one, may feel they have to comply with the demand, just in case the hijacker’s claim to have control of explosives is true.

A suicide vest or belt that could bring an aircraft down would be detected by even the most cursory airport security checks. If crews have lost faith in the security system to this extent, this sort of event could occur regularly.

In its final report on the Germanwings crash last year, French accident investigation agency BEA has pointed out the previously unstated (if obvious) fact that having two pilots in charge of an airliner may be a defence against the physical incapacitation of one of them, but it is not a guaranteed defence against pilot mental incapacitation.

This is an official acceptance of the fact that one of the industry’s primary fail-safe provisions for the safety of airline passengers can be rendered invalid under those circumstances.

The report, published today, removes any doubt that might still have remained about why the aircraft crashed. There was nothing wrong with the aeroplane or its systems, it states, and the copilot crashed the Airbus A320 deliberately by preventing the captain from re-entering the cockpit after taking a toilet break and programming the autopilot to aim the aircraft at the ground in a rapid descent.

So that’s that.

But can something be done to prevent such an occurrence? The BEA thinks so.

Unusually for an accident report, the recommendations are nothing to do with the aircraft or with operational procedures, and all to do with the detection and mitigation of the effects of pilot mental health.

Briefly, it says, it would be pointless and ineffective to submit all pilots who have no history of mental health issues to regular psychological or psychiatric tests. But at the time any pilot begins to train for a commercial pilot licence, says the BEA, the individual’s entire medical history – including mental health issues – should be scrutinised, and re-examined periodically.

A history of some forms of mental illness need not, alone, become a barrier to progress as a professional pilot, says the BEA. But where there has been a record of – say – depressive illness, that should become part of the pilot’s regular medical review, and if necessary the required regularity of review could be increased.

One of the things that prevented Germanwings, in this case, taking precautionary action regarding their copilot – who had a known history of depressive illness – is the existence of German law regarding medical confidentiality. The airline was not informed that the copilot had received recent treatment, advice and medication because of a return of his depressive state.

The BEA says law must be changed to allow medical doctors to breach confidentiality where patients with safety-critical jobs are concerned if the public might be endangered.

It also appeals for a statutory basis for systems of peer review to be set up at airlines. This is not a new idea and is just plain common sense, but most airlines do not use it.

The safety agency also wants airlines to do something about the state of affairs that, it reckons, prevented this copilot approaching his airline for help following medical advice: the fear of losing his livelihood.

Frankly, what it recommends is that airlines should be good, caring employers of their pilots, and play an active part in fostering their wellbeing.

That sounds like a good idea for any kind of business where safety-critical employees are concerned.

People flock to air displays to see thrilling flying. The fact that it looks dangerous is part of the attraction.

It turns out – in case anyone ever doubted it – that display flying is very dangerous. But mainly to the pilot rather than the audience. The UK Air Accident Investigation Branch has just put some figures to the display flying accident rate, which had not been done before.

The AAIB reveals that the fatal risk to display pilots at UK air shows is nearly twice that to pilots at US air displays.

This deep examination of the whole business of air display safety is the official reaction to the crash in August 2015 of a Hawker Hunter T7 jet onto a busy road next to Shoreham airfield during an air display routine. The pilot survived, but 11 people on the A27 road died – the first time since 1952 that UK air show onlookers have been killed.

The final report is not yet complete, but the AAIB has issued two interim reports and a load of recommendations.

The AAIB has now estimated that the fatal display accident rate in the UK is one accident causing death or serious injury per 219 display hours. The agency explains: “Over the ten years to the end of 2015 there were nine display accidents in which the aircraft was destroyed and either a fatal or serious injury resulted.  This equates to one such accident per 219 display hours or 456 such accidents per 100,000 flying hours of which – historically –  55% have involved fatalities.” Those figures were reached by assuming the duration of the average individual display routine is eight minutes.

By comparison, the fatal accident rate for UK general aviation activity as a whole is 1.5 fatal accidents per 100,000h. That makes display flying roughly 300 times as dangerous as the GA flying average.

Another AAIB revelation makes clear why they have decided it’s time to tighten up display flying management. The report says: “Among UK display accidents, 65% involved the aircraft crashing outside the area controlled by the organisers of the display.  This equates, at 2015 levels of activity, to one display aircraft crash in an area accessible to the public every 1.7 years.”

It seems everyone knew air display flying was dangerous, but not precisely how dangerous. I suspect the attitudes that allowed this regime to continue unquestioned until now are inherited, dating back to the early days of flying when thrills and spills were considered all a part of the fun, and providing spectators didn’t get hurt, that was fine.

The Shoreham inquiry has also thrown up the fact that the existing rules governing the conduct and management of air shows were sound, but they were often not tightly policed. It turns out that the Shoreham flight display director (FDD), a display pilot and former CAA safety expert, was not required specifically to know in advance the sequence of aerobatic manoeuvres the Hunter was to carry out – and he did not know them.

Yet there was also a requirement that the FDD conduct a risk management assessment of the display, and that could not be done without knowing the planned sequence.

If the FDD had checked the Hunter’s planned sequence and speeds in advance, he would have discovered that – at many points in the routine – the aircraft would inevitably exit from the permitted display areas defined by the location of built-up areas close to the airfield. Indeed the same aircraft, displaying the previous year, had done just that, but no-one got hurt so it was ignored.

This is just one example of the fact that the main requirement for improving display safety is to apply existing rules more strictly, rather than rewrite them completely.

The rules about how display flying and air shows should be conducted are set out in the CAA’s publication CAP 403. Perhaps the key statement in it is this: “The impromptu, ad hoc, unrehearsed or unplanned should never be attempted.” That means every part of every routine must be known by all parties, rehearsed before the show, and strictly adhered to.

If that rule alone – which had always been there – were to have been applied strictly at Shoreham in August last year, the crash would not have happened. Indeed the Hunter routine that led to disaster would either have been banned or modified considerably to make it comply with existing rules.

For some industries it doesn’t make much difference whether the UK is in the EU or out of it. But from the air travel industry point of view, British exit makes no sense.

The EU is – for the airlines of member states – a domestic marketplace. Since it became one it has allowed airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair to provide EU citizens with an unprecedented network of very low cost air travel.

EU air travel deregulation has transformed the market from the early 1980s sparse network of trunk routes on which capacities and the number of operators were limited by bilateral aviation treaties between each pair of states, to today’s vibrant point-to-point marketplace.

If the UK elects to leave the EU, where does that leave British-based European network airlines like EasyJet? If  it were to remain headquartered in a non-EU state (at Luton), how can it continue to enjoy the EU domestic privileges that its Ireland-based rival Ryanair will still have?

Having said that, Ryanair’s biggest single European base is at Stansted, UK (at the moment). Although Ryanair will still be an EU airline, its flights to other European countries from its UK bases will suddenly be international journeys.

So many questions arise. Would it make sense for EasyJet to move its headquarters to one of its bases in an EU state, and for Ryanair to reduce its Stansted services?

Certainly renegotiation of aviation agreements between Britain and the EU states would take all of the two years allowed for it. Far from freeing the industry from Brussels bureacracy, it would be moving from present simplicity to – inevitably – greater regulatory complexity.

Certainly that’s what Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary thinks: “I’m more afraid of UK bureaucracy than EU bureaucracy. To all these ‘Leave’ campaigners who think Brussels bureaucrats are terrible but British bureaucrats are fantastic forward-thinking gurus, I’d point out that they (the Brits) can’t make a decision on a new runway to save their lives. They keep kicking the can down the road, and the only impact they’ve had on air travel for the past 10 years is to raise taxes.” (Quote from Flightglobal)

Luton-based EasyJet and Exeter-based Flybe are not so well placed. They are British, but have bases and hubs all over Europe. EasyJet has formally espoused the “better in the EU” argument, but tells me it has a Plan B.  EZY places its hopes in the two-year renegotiation period, and the fact that the EU has a liberal attitude to air services by non-EU airlines like Norwegian.

But to say they face a period of uncertainty is an understatement.

British Airways is better insulated by virtue of its massive international long-haul marketplace. And it could easily, as an IAG carrier, move its BA headquarters to Spain if it saw fit.

Virgin Atlantic is also more international than European. But if they both stick with the status quo and the Brexit camp wins, they will both lose their status as EU airlines, including the negotiating clout that currently gives them in international bilateral negotiations.

Mathematician and Boeing 777 captain Simon Hardy is far from the only person to have advanced a reason-based proposition as to where MH370’s wreckage is most likely to be found, but his calculations have survived criticism and are as valid as any others in the public domain.

Here is what he has to say about how things stand now:

“The centre of the ATSB [Australian Transport Safety Board] hotspot and that of my own are now only 105nm apart. Before this report the centre of our preferred search areas were nowhere near this degree of agreement.

“My ‘hotspot’ is within the planned search area but in what the ATSB calls a Low Priority Area. They [ATSB] are however fully aware of my work on the matter, as I am in regular contact with them as I continue to try to pinpoint the aircraft as accurately as possible.” Hardy’s latter reference is to his work refining potential outcomes based on 777 glide performance combined with data derived from the last satellite handshakes.

“I am pleased that the area I have identified will at least be partially searched in the coming weeks. The ATSB seems to be using the sailing time to and from Fremantle  as a way of searching my preferred area en-route, thus saving time and expense.”

Hardy now refers to work on the MH370 disappearance by Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group:

“The DST Group results are derived in a totally different way from my own ‘technique’, yet give results that are in relatively close agreement. Considering the two methods are estimating a proposed position following more than six hours of flying ‘off radar’ this is a remarkable result, the distance covered during  those un-monitored six hours being many thousands of kilometres (approx 5,000km).”

He continues: “The likelihood of only one turn taking place, near the tip of Sumatra, for the journey south, was revealed by my technique back in December 2014. The latest report now agrees with that, so I am hopeful that we are now on the right track and homing in on the aircraft.”

Here is the latest the ATSB has to say about progress.