Chinese court awards MH370 families $4.5-million, but for some it’s a bitter victory

Flight MH370 vanished in the early hours of March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Just weeks before a long-stalled search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is due to resume in the southern Indian Ocean, a Chinese court on Monday awarded damages of more than $500,000 each to the families of eight passengers onboard the missing aircraft.

Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished in the early hours of March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The incident sparked a massive international search, as well as a global obsession that has spawned multiple books, documentaries and wild conspiracy theories.

In early 2015, Malaysia officially classified the plane’s disappearance as an accident, with all those onboard presumed dead, and the f