ISLAMABAD — Pakistani rescuers located 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, the country’s airports authority said, adding that efforts were underway to find the five crew members who were on board.
The wreckage of the K2 Airways cargo Boeing 737 was recovered 53 nautical miles (98 km) south of Ormara, a town on Pakistan’s southern coast.
The plane was approaching Karachi from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates when radar showed it “rapidly descending” on Tuesday evening after reporting a “navigational system issue”, according to the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA).
After a 12-hour search, Pakistan’s navy and maritime rescue agency “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 authority published images of personnel lifting pieces of the fuselage from a small boat on to 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, Pakistan’s 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 told AFP that navy and merchant vessels were taking part in the search efforts, supported by military aircraft.
K2 Airways said the crew comprised two pilots, two engineers and one support staffer. Authorities have made no official declaration on their status.
The plane reported a navigational system issue at 9:18 pm Pakistan Standard Time (1618 GMT) while flying toward 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 kilometers per hour — an extremely steep and abnormal rate of descent.
K2 Airways is a private cargo airline in Pakistan that operates scheduled and charter flights domestically and internationally.
The 737-400 was the company’s only aircraft and entered service with the carrier in 2024. Its previous flight was on June 28, according to Flightradar24 data.
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. It was one of Boeing’s decades-old 737-400s, two generations older than the 737 MAX that has been involved in a safety crisis.
The incident was 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.
Source: Saudi Gazette