Compensation hearings have begun in a Beijing court brought by the Chinese relatives of people who died on a Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared in 2014. Flight MH370 disappeared while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the fate of which remains a mystery after almost a decade.
The Boeing 777-200, with 227 passengers and 12 crew onboard, is believed to have crashed into the Southern Ocean south of India.
Among the 227 passengers onboard flight MH370, 154 were Chinese citizens. Some relatives continue to refuse to believe the plane simply disappeared, believing that it was forced to land at an undisclosed destination and that their loved ones remain alive.
Consequently, these families refused to accept relatively modest compassionate payments from the airline and are seeking increased settlements from the airline’s insurers.
While full details of the lawsuits have not been disclosed, it has been established that they are based on the contention that the airline failed to take measures to locate the plane after it disappeared over the South China Sea about 38 minutes after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on the night of March 8, 2014.
Relatives have been communicating online and say they expect the hearings to extend to mid-December.
Various theories have been circulated about the fate of the plane since 2014, both by aviation experts as well as conspiracy theorists. Such theories include mechanical failure, a hijacking attempt, or a deliberate intervention by those in the cockpit, causing the total loss of the aircraft.
However, after many months of intense searching, no sign of where MH370 went down was discovered, and only relatively small fragments of the plane have been found washed up on beaches around the Indian Ocean since.
Despite numerous investigations and searches, little evidence has been found to show why the plane diverted from its originally planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Due to the lack of any firm evidence as to the fate of the flight, it remains unclear what financial obligations the airline may have to the families – particularly as no charges have ever been brought against the flight crew.
However, despite any cause being attributed to any individual or corporate entity, the relatives say they wish for a suitable amount of compensation to be paid for the disaster that deprived them of their loved ones and, in many cases, placed them in financial difficulty due to the loss of their family’s primary earner.