By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: The wreckage of a cargo jet that vanished over the Arabian Sea was located on Wednesday roughly 53 nautical miles south of the coastal town of Ormara, capping a 12-hour search by the Pakistan Navy and maritime security forces that mobilised warships, surveillance aircraft, and merchant vessels within hours of the plane’s disappearance.
The Boeing 737-400, operated by the Karachi-based carrier K2 Airways, was flying a cargo route from Sharjah to Karachi when it dropped off radar late Tuesday night, according to the Pakistan Airports Authority. Five crew members were aboard. None had been found by Wednesday evening, and officials said recovery efforts were continuing.
The authority said the flight crew had reported a navigational system problem at 9:18 p.m Tuesday. and was in contact with the Karachi Area Control Centre when, three minutes later, the aircraft was observed on radar descending rapidly and turning sharply off its heading. Radar contact and communication were lost soon after, roughly 155 nautical miles — about 287 kilometers — west of Karachi.
An air traffic controller told reporters that the pilot never issued a Mayday call, and that the crew may not have had time to, given how quickly the emergency unfolded. Flight-tracking data reviewed by the aviation site FlightRadar showed the aircraft cruising normally at 35,000 feet and roughly 790 kilometers per hour before it abruptly turned back toward the sea and began a steep descent. Within five minutes, the plane had lost about 34,000 feet of altitude, the data showed, eventually slowing to 211 kilometers per hour at 1,100 feet before it disappeared from radar entirely.
The five crew members were identified by the cargo company as pilot Muhammad Rizwan Idris, first officer Faisal Mehmood, loadmaster Muhammad Taufiq, engineer Arif Siddiqui, and Muhammad Hamid. The company’s office at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi was sealed following the crash so that records could be preserved, according to people familiar with the matter.
The search drew on a wide array of military and civilian resources. The Navy dispatched the warships PNS Zulfiqar and PNS Hunain, while the Pakistan Air Force sent a Saab surveillance aircraft to join the effort. A Navy ATR aircraft flew out from Turbat to assist from the air, and merchant vessels operating in the area were enlisted in the search as well.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday directed the Civil Aviation Authority, the Navy, and the Air Force to intensify the search, instructing them to use every available resource, state-run Radio Pakistan reported. The prime minister extended his condolences to the families of the crew.
By Wednesday, with the wreckage finally located, the Pakistan Airports Authority said naval and maritime aircraft and vessels remained on the scene, with search teams combing the debris field for the missing crew members and for evidence that might explain what brought the plane down. The authority said further details would be released as the operation continued.
According to FlightRadar, the aircraft — registered AP-BOI — was a Boeing 737-4M0(BDSF) that had only recently entered service with K2 Airways, in 2024. It carried a long history in commercial aviation: delivered new to Aeroflot as a passenger jet in 1999, it later flew for Indonesia’s Garuda before being converted into a freighter in 2012 and operated in subsequent years by TNT Airways and ASL Airlines.
The disappearance revived memories of a similar tragedy 16 years ago. In 2010, a Russian-operated cargo plane carrying eight people crashed into a residential neighborhood in Karachi shortly after takeoff, bound for Khartoum, Sudan. All eight aboard were killed, and the crash ignited fires in nearby buildings and set off a large rescue operation, officials said at the time. That aircraft, too, lost contact with air traffic controllers within minutes of departure.
K2 Airways was established in May 2018, after receiving an airline charter license from the Pakistani government, and operates as a private cargo carrier based in Karachi.
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