Strong Eagle said: "I traveled internationally from KLIA at least once a week for more than a year. There has been a two pass metal detector system in place for at least 3 years, but the first stop, after immigration and before the airline concourses, has always been a bit weak... no separate removal of laptops, etc, and I've walked through with bottles of water in my backpack.
But at the second screening at the gate, the inspections have been much more thorough... I've seen plenty of bottles, containers, and other paraphernalia confiscated. It has also been mandatory over the total of more than 6 years that I flew out of KLIA to remove laptops and electronics, and remove coats for separate scanning. Bottled water, a cup of coffee or a canned soda has never been allowed through the boarding gate in all the time that I've flown through KLIA.
Edited to add: If one failed to pass the scanner at the gate, then a "body search" did ensue, consisting of a hand scan and sometimes a pat down. But like virtually every other body search I've undergone, they are relatively ineffective because to find well hidden contraband, the search must be much more intrusive.
This nonsense of removing belts and shoes is unfortunate... I've seen it only in the US and in the Philippines, and I don't see the point in this implementation."
I would presume that this tightening up reported by Malaysian Airports is due to the footage released of the pilots walking through the gates with jackets on, and setting off an alarm, yet not being searched or asked to remove metal objects and being re checked. Everyone wants to trust pilots, but obviously, the checks need to be as stringent for them as anyone else.
The psychological profilers being called for (really, not just plain psychologists) would likely confirm that the likelihood is equally as great for a pilot to go off the rails as anyone else. We're talking about a fraction of 1% of the population who go off for whatever reason. Emotional, political, financial.
The psychologists would also confirm that tighter security is/was necessary to maintain passenger confidence. That's common sense.
I would like to believe there was catastrophic damage that caused all of the comms failure, and let the plane fly until fuel was exhausted, with a plane full of people who had a peaceful (relatively) death from hypoxia and knew nothing of it, but the longer it takes to find any signs and the more left field theories and conspiracies thrown in, the more we falter from accepting it as an a/c problem, and pin it on a person problem imo.