K2 Airways Boeing 737 cargo plane disappears off Karachi; wreckage later located

Relatives of the five crew members aboard a Boeing 737 cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea off Karachi last week are urging an international search effort to find the flight recorders to determine the cause. Debris from the K2 Airways freighter was recovered shortly after the July 7 crash, but the water in the area is about 3,000 metres deep. Finding the “black boxes” would require a costly underwater search likely to need foreign assistance, according to aviation experts familiar with deepwater crashes such as Air France 447 in 2009. The locator beacons on the 27-year-old plane were designed to transmit pings for only 30 days. Recovering the recorders could show whether a navigation system issue reported shortly before the crash was linked to a navigation component that relatives say was replaced before the flight. The Pakis­tan Airports Authority has not provided an update on the search operation for a week, and an industrial company with underwater search expertise told Reuters it had not heard of any requests by Pakistan for assistance from foreign companies or navies. “The search has to continue, and whatever resources can be deployed, locally and internationally, should be deployed,” Yashib Rizwan, the eldest son of Captain Rizwan Idris, told Reuters. “For us, a transparent investigation is key,” he said. Engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui’s son, Abdur Rafay Siddiqui, also called for international assistance if needed. Both families have held funeral prayers after losing hope that the bodies would be recovered. The government has not responded to questions about whether it will seek foreign assistance to search for the plane. K2, which lost its only plane in the crash, has not responded to requests for comment. Navigational system issue The pilots reported a navigational system issue at 9:18 pm while flying to Karachi from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, the PAA said last week. Local air traffic control tried to guide it, but three minutes later, radar systems showed the plane descending rapidly and communication was lost, it said. Flightradar24 data showed the plane plunged about 5,000 feet in less than a minute, climbed about 6,000 feet in 30 seconds and then entered a catastrophic dive from 36,550 feet. The plane spent about 10 days in Sharjah before the flight while the pilots awaited a replacement part from the US after a maintenance fault, said Ghulam Nabi, the father-in-law of co-pilot Faisal Jatoi. One of the plane’s two inertial reference units (IRUs), which feed information on the aircraft’s position, speed and orientation to the cockpit displays, was replaced in Sharjah, the captain’s son Yashib Rizwan said. “If you have a problem with your IRU, you just can’t rely upon the instruments,” said John Goglia, a former US National Transportation Safety Board member, adding that pilots flying at night over the ocean without visual references could struggle to determine the aircraft’s orientation. Aircraft accidents are usually caused by multiple factors, and it remains unclear whether the replacement of the IRU is related to the crash. An inertial reference system malfunction contributed to the 2007 Adam Air crash in Indonesia, where investigators found the pilots became fixated on troubleshooting erroneous information, failed to notice a steep right bank and lost control before the aircraft plunged into the sea, killing all 102 people aboard. Pings from the Adam Air black boxes were detected about three weeks after the crash in a search aided by the US Navy, but recovering the recorders from about 2,000m of water took a months-long multimillion-dollar effort using a specialised remotely operated vehicle. US aviation expert Todd Curtis said on the “Flight Safety Detectives” podcast that Pakistan was unlikely to mount a similar recovery operation unless there was a compelling reason given the K2 plane was an ageing cargo jet rather than a current-production passenger model.

By Akhtar Soomro and Ariba ShahidKARACHI, July 17 (Reuters) - Relatives of the five crew members aboard a Boeing 737 cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan last week are urging an international search effort to find the flight recorders to determine the cause.Debris from the K2 Airways freighter was recovered shortly after the July 7 crash, but the water in the area is about 3,000 m (9,800 feet) deep.

The Pakistan Aviation Authority (PAA) said on Friday that the search for the crew of a cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea was ongoing, adding that additional wreckage had been located. In a statement, the authority said the search and rescue missions by the Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Maritime Security Agency in the deep sea were still in progress. “The search for the crew members is continuing with full vigour through the coordinated employment of aerial and sea-borne assets,” it said. “Additional parts and debris of the ill-fated aircraft have been located and retrieved for subsequent analysis by the investigation team,” it said, adding that updates would be shared as the search and rescue operations continued. On Tuesday night, a K2 Airways Boeing 737-400 cargo aircraft en route from Sharjah to Karachi had disappeared from radar over the Arabian Sea, about 300 kilometres west of Karachi, while approaching Pakistani airspace. The pilot had reported a navigation problem during the flight and requested assistance from the area control centre. Five crew members were on board the aircraft, including two pilots, two engineers and one support staffer. After 12 hours of a search and rescue operation in the deep sea, the wreckage of the plane was found 53 nautical miles (98km) south of Ormara port on Wednesday. K2 Airways is a private airline based in Karachi. The carrier was established in May 2018 after being granted an airline charter licence by the government.

On July 8th Pakistan Airports Authority confirmed that search teams had found and identified wreckage belonging to the missing K2 Airways Boeing 737 freighter. As you can see HERE, pieces of the aircraft were found in the sea 53 NM (98 km) to the south of the Pakistani coastal town of Ormara.

A Boeing 737 cargo plane operated by K2 Airways is believed to have crashed into the Arabian Sea after rapidly descending off the coast of Pakistan, with a major navy and air force search operation now underway

Islamabad: Pakistani rescuers found the wreckage of a cargo plane in a deep-sea search operation on Wednesday, 12 hours after it went missing off the coast of Karachi, with efforts underway to find the five crew members who were on board, authorities said.The wreckage of the K2 Airways Boeing 737 was recovered 53 nautical miles (98 km) south ‌of Ormara port, the Pakistan ⁠Airports Authority ⁠said.The Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Maritime Security Agency deployed "various air and sea borne assets" to locate the remains, it said, adding that the search operation was continuing to find the crew members.Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ​had directed authorities to speed up the search for the 27-year-old converted freighter, which went missing in the Arabian Sea after reporting a navigational system problem.K2 Airways, the plane's operator, said ​the crew comprised two pilots, two engineers and one support staffer. Authorities have made no official declaration on their status, although Sharif expressed his "heartfelt condolences" to their families.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 9:18 ​p.m. Pakistan Standard Time (1618 GMT) ​on Tuesday while flying towards Karachi from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, the airports authority said.PLANE DESCENDED RAPIDLYLocal 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.U.S. safety expert and former commercial pilot John Cox said in an interview that flight-tracking data available so far suggested the crew appeared to be struggling with the airplane for unknown reasons."It is possible, in the last portions of it, that the airplane was ​stalled and descending at ​a very, very high rate," said Cox, who ⁠has experience flying the 737-400.Air crashes are typically caused by multiple factors, and investigations can take at least a year to complete.Authorities in Pakistan, which is leading the probe under international rules, have not said whether they have recovered the plane's "black boxes" that provide crucial data.The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it had appointed ​an accredited representative to assist Pakistan in the investigation along with technical advisers from Boeing, GE Aerospace and the Federal Aviation Administration.The K2 Airways jet 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.