Countdown to find K2's wreckage, black box

Aviation experts have warned that the search for the wreckage and black box of the K2 Airways cargo aircraft that crashed into the Arabian Sea has entered a critical phase, with the underwater locator beacons attached to the flight recorders expected to stop transmitting after August 8. They say the search must immediately shift from surface operations to deep-sea sonar surveys if investigators are to recover the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR).

Aviation expert and Sky Wings Aviation CEO Imran Aslam Khan said the July 7 crash near Ormara scattered floating debris across an estimated one million square kilometres of the Arabian Sea, making surface searches increasingly ineffective. Mathematical drift models, he said, show that sonar-based deep-sea operations now offer the best chance of locating the wreckage before the black box beacon batteries expire.

He recommended deploying towed pinger locators - highly sensitive underwater hydrophone systems capable of detecting flight recorder beacon signals - as well as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) equipped with advanced sonar mapping systems and cameras.