THE bodies of the three young Maslin children, killed when Flight MH17 was shot out of the sky in July, were flown into Melbourne Airport on Thursday afternoon.

Mo, 12, Evie, 10 and Otis, 8, were among several MH17 victims whose remains were flown to Australia aboard a RAAF transport plane before being carried by 10 hearses to Melbourne Coroner’s Court.

The children, and their grandfather, Nick Norris, from Perth, were among 38 Australians who were killed when rebels shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight above eastern Ukraine on July 17.

A total of 298 people lost their lives in the tragedy.

All but two of the Australian victims have now been identified.

Sources confirmed that a “substantial repatriation’’ took place on Thursday.

The Victorian Coroner is co-ordinating the certification process for the bodies, ­meaning all the victims will come via Melbourne before returning to their home states for burial.

The flight carrying the Maslin family and the other victims arrived in Melbourne about 4.30pm after departing from Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Defence personnel carried the coffins from the Globemaster transport plane into a hangar as a lone piper played.

Family members greeted the coffins as they arrived on Australian soil.

MH17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile — blamed by Ukraine and the West on Russian-backed rebels — near Donetsk as civil war raged between separatists and Ukrainian forces.

The conflict meant it was weeks before the bodies could be recovered from the fields where the plane went down.

The remains were flown to a military air base in Eindhoven, where international experts formally identified them before returning them to loved ones across the globe.

It is thought that 27 of the Australian victims have now been returned to home soil.

ellen.whinnett@news.com.au