Relatives of passengers on MH370 welcomed the Malaysian government’s approval of a new search.

“I am so happy for the news… Feels like the best Christmas present ever,” Jacquita Gonzales, the wife of MH370 inflight supervisor Patrick Gomes, told the New Straits Times.

“This announcement stirs mixed emotions – hope, gratitude, and sorrow. After nearly 11 years, the uncertainty and pain of not having answers have been incredibly difficult for us,” Intan Maizura Othaman also told the papers. Her husband, Mohd Hazrin Mohamed Hasnan, was a member of the cabin crew.

Jiang Hui, whose mother was on the plane, told Reuters news agency the Malaysian government must have a “more open approach” to the search to allow more players to take part.

Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of 8 March 2014. It lost communication with air traffic control less than an hour after take-off and radar showed that it deviated from its planned flight path.

Investigators generally agree that the plane crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean – though it is unclear as to why it happened.

Pieces of debris, believed to be from the plane, have washed up on shores of the Indian Ocean in the years after the disappearance.

A host of conspiracy theories have sprouted around the aircraft’s disappearance, from speculation that the pilot had deliberately brought down the plane to claims that it had been shot down by foreign military.

A 2018 investigation into the aircraft’s disappearance found that the plane’s controls were likely deliberately manipulated to take it off course, but drew no conclusions about who had been behind it.

Investigators said at the time that “the answer can only be conclusive if the wreckage is found”.