About the passengers: it's the Midnight to Dawn flight to Beijing. Guessing most passengers intended to sleep the flight away.
About Malaysian Air Force scrambling fighters (response to poster ETOPS):
Not trying to give the Malaysians the needle here, but why would one assume they are on alert 30 or alert 15 at midnight? I have no insight into what "DEFCON" condition Malaysia maintains, but they don't have a large Air Force, and it's the late shift. The flight profile as described, heading west, may very well NOT match a given threat profile they use to scramble fighters.
My KISS principle applied to that is that it isn't a surprise that nobody launched an alert fighter section.