A Beijing court has directed Malaysia Airlines to compensate the relatives of eight passengers from the vanished MH370 flight, awarding approximately £307,000 to each family.
The Chaoyang District People's Court delivered its judgment last Friday, more than a decade after the Boeing 777 disappeared without trace.
The compensation covers funeral-related costs, psychological trauma damages and additional losses suffered by the bereaved families.
Although the fate of those aboard remains unknown, passengers have been officially declared dead under legal proceedings.
The aircraft, pictured in 2011, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 | WIKIMEDIA COMMONSThe ruling marks a significant development for Chinese families who have spent years pursuing accountability through the courts, with the majority of those on the ill-fated flight holding Chinese nationality.
Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew members, vanished from radar screens on 8 March 2014 during its journey from Kuala Lumpur to the Chinese capital.
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's final communication came roughly 40 minutes after departure, when he transmitted "good night, Malaysian three seven zero" as the aircraft entered Vietnamese airspace.
Shortly afterwards, the transponder stopped functioning and contact was lost entirely.
Radar tracking indicated the plane made an unexpected left turn across Peninsular Malaysia, with investigators subsequently concluding it likely crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
The subsequent multinational search operation became the most exhaustive in aviation history, yet the main wreckage has never been located.
Small fragments of debris have washed ashore over the years, but these have proved insufficient to determine what caused the disaster.
The court confirmed that 23 lawsuits from the original 78 filed by families remain unresolved.
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Families write on the memorial wall for victims of MH370 | GettyAccording to the Beijing court, some relatives have not yet initiated or finalised the legal procedures required to obtain a declaration of death for their loved ones.
A further 47 civil claims have been withdrawn after the families concerned reached private settlements with Malaysia Airlines and its international subsidiary.
The combination of court-ordered compensation, out-of-court agreements and pending cases reflects the complex legal landscape that has emerged over more than ten years of litigation.
Chinese citizens comprised nearly two-thirds of those aboard the aircraft, with passengers from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, India, the United States, the Netherlands and France also among those lost.
Pieces of debris found in Madagascar, believed to be from flight MH370 were shown to media members before handing over to Malaysia's Transport Minister Anthony Loke in Putrajaya on November 30, 2018 | GettyMalaysian authorities announced last week that efforts to locate the missing aircraft will recommence on 30 December, offering renewed hope to families who have waited more than a decade for answers.
China's Foreign Ministry has welcomed the decision to resume the search operation.
Relatives of those who perished have long campaigned for continued efforts to find the wreckage, viewing it as essential to achieving closure.
Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott claimed in 2020 that senior Malaysian government figures believed from the earliest stages that Captain Shah deliberately crashed the aircraft.
However, without recovering the plane itself, investigators remain unable to establish definitively what occurred during those final hours.