Relatives of Chinese passengers of the infamous flight Malaysia Airlines MH370 gathered in Beijing today, still searching for answers exactly ten years on after the mysterious disappearance of the plane.

The Malaysian airline’s Boeing 777, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board – 153 of whom were Chinese – disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014.

The plane has never been found and its fate is one of the great mysteries of civil aviation.

But the families repeated in Beijing today their appeal to the Chinese authorities to help uncover the truth. The father of a passenger on flight MH370, Lee Soos, said he was “hopeful”.

“I am sure my son is alive. We hope he will be able to return home,” he said after talks with Chinese government officials near the foreign ministry.

Fifteen people, including Lee Soos, then gathered in the afternoon in a square near the Malaysian embassy in Beijing, access to which had been blocked by police for security reasons.

“Malaysia, give us back our relatives!”, they shouted in the direction of the building.

A small group of protesters, including one carrying a letter addressed to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, was allowed to approach the embassy.

Despite the most extensive search ever made in the history of aviation and carried out for years in the southern Indian Ocean, only a few fragments of the plane have been found.

The disappearance of the plane has long been the subject of many theories, from the most credible to the most unbelievable, most notably the one that speaks of a deliberate action by pilot Zachary Ahmad Shah, an experienced professional who was 53 years old at the time.

Ten years later, relatives still hope they will one day get answers.

“I hope the Chinese government can reunite our loved ones and find out the truth about what happened,” said Li Sus. “It’s already been 10 years… And now? What finally happened? Was it something to do with politics? Something else; We don’t know anything.”