Wreckage of cargo plane found

PAA says search for crew ongoing

KARACHI:

Pakistan located the wreckage of a Boeing cargo plane on Wednesday, the country's airports authority said, adding that rescuers were searching for five crew on board when the aircraft had gone missing.

The plane was approaching Karachi from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates when radar showed it "rapidly descending" Tuesday evening after reporting a "navigational system issue", according to the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA).

Pakistan's navy and maritime rescue agency, after searching for 12 hours, "successfully located and identified wreckage of K2 Airways Cargo B737 which was declared missing last night", the PAA said in a statement posted on X.

The wreckage was found in the Arabian Sea, off Ormara town on Pakistan's southern coast, it said.

"Efforts are underway to find the missing crew members," the PAA added.

The authority published images of personnel lifting pieces of the fuselage from a small boat onto a larger vessel and the red and white debris with the words "K2 Air" laid out on the ship's deck.

In a statement issued before the plane wreckage was found, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed "deep sorrow, grief, and regret over the tragic incident in which a private cargo aircraft... crashed into the Arabian Sea and went missing".

A source familiar with the matter told AFP that both navy and merchant vessels were taking part in the search efforts, supported by military aircraft.

The aircraft was observed on radar at 21:21 pm (1621 GMT) on Tuesday "rapidly descending and with rapid heading change", and communication contact was lost about 155 nautical miles west of Karachi, the PAA said.

Preliminary data sent from the plane "indicated a loss of altitude, followed by a climb, and then a second, sudden and dramatic loss of altitude", according to Flightradar24.com, a global flight-tracking service.

K2 Airways is a private cargo airline in Pakistan that operates scheduled and charter flights domestically and internationally.

Manufactured in 1999, the aircraft flew as a passenger plane for Aeroflot and Garuda Indonesia before being converted to a cargo configuration in 2012, according to Airfleets.net.

The plane may have crashed into the sea southwest of Karachi after a series of sharp altitude changes before a steep final descent, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24.

Authorities had launched a coordinated search and rescue operation at sea through various agencies, the airports authority said.

K2 Airways said it was cooperating with the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority and other government agencies.

Boeing has not yet commented. The plane reported a navigational system issue at 9:18pm Pakistan Standard Time while flying towards Karachi, the airports authority said.

Local air traffic control tried to guide it but three minutes later radar systems showed the plane descending rapidly and communication was lost, the authority said.

The flight was about 155 nautical miles (287 km) west of Karachi at the time, according to the statement.

The final minutes of Flightradar24's tracking data appeared chaotic, showing the plane plunging about 5,000 feet in less than a minute before soaring about 6,000 feet in 30 seconds and then entering a catastrophic dive from 36,550 feet.

The last transmitted data point placed the aircraft at 1,100 feet above sea level, with a vertical rate of minus 22,400 feet per minute - about 400 kilometres per hour - an extremely steep and abnormal rate of descent.

The missing aircraft is one of Boeing's decades-old 737-400s, two generations older than the 737 MAX that has been involved in a safety crisis.

It uses engines made by CFM International, jointly owned by GE Aerospace and France's Safran. The 737-400 was first delivered as a passenger plane to Russia's Aeroflot in 1999 and was converted to a freighter in 2012, according to Flightradar24.

It is K2 Airways' only aircraft and entered service with the carrier in 2024. Its previous flight was on June 28, according to Flightradar24 data. The incident would be Pakistan's first fatal crash since 2020, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320 came down short of the runway in Karachi, killing 97 people.