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A terrorism expert says the use of stolen passports on flight 370 ''eerily'' resembles a 1994 attack on a Philippines flight by an al-Qaeda-linked hijacker and represents a ''massive security failure''.
As the vanished Malaysia Airlines flight focused international attention on the problem of passport fraud, Carl Ungerer, an independent security consultant and former adviser to past foreign minister Bob Carr, said there was a thriving market for stolen and doctored documentation in south-east Asia.
Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted in connection with the 1993 US World Trade Centre bombing, planted a bomb on a Philippine Airlines flight in 1994, killing one passenger but failing to bring down the plane.
He used a stolen Italian passport - a similar situation to the stolen Italian and Austrian passports used by two passengers in boarding the vanished flight 370.
Dr Ungerer said such fraud was harder today but the lapse by Malaysian immigration officials highlighted the deep flaws remaining in the international system.
''At least one of the passports was stolen 18 months ago and reported and he'd actually acquired a new passport and was flying on it. So if the systems can't pick up something like that, then there's something seriously wrong somewhere along the chain.''
The fact that US officials - and most likely Australian officials - had rushed to examine the failure showed the extent of their concern, he said.
Interpol expressed its own frustration, revealing that passengers flew 1 billion times last year without having their passports checked against the international agency's database.
''Interpol is asking why only a handful of countries worldwide are taking care to make sure that persons possessing stolen passports are not boarding international flights,'' the agency's secretary-general, Ronald Noble, said.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said Australian border officials used ''a range of systems to verify the legitimacy of travel documentation'' - including the Interpol database.
''The Department of Immigration and Border Protection performs document alert checks and identity checks on all passengers at visa grant, and upon entry or exit from Australia. Relevant Interpol holdings form part of those checks,'' the spokesman said.
But a security firm boss who introduced biometric surveillance to airports throughout the Asia-Pacific region in the wake of September 11 said Australia lacked checks for outgoing passengers, which meant a convicted terrorist was able to flee Australia in December.
''It's a very big hole,'' said the chief executive of Homeland Security Asia-Pacific, Roger Henning. Experts say Malaysia has a relatively good security record.
