Rescue services have located the wreckage of a Boeing cargo plane missing off the coast of Karachi, the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) announced on Wednesday in a message published on the social network X.
“After 12 hours of searching at sea, rescue services managed to locate the wreckage of the K2 Airways plane, which had disappeared last night,” the PAA said, adding that the search continued to find the five crew members.
The aircraft was detected in a “rapid descent” shortly before it disappeared from radar screens, the same source said.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed “his deep sadness, grief and regret over this tragic accident,” according to a statement released by his office.
He expressed condolences to the families of the five crew members on board and requested the Pakistani Civil Aviation Authority, Navy and Air Force to intensify search and rescue operations and mobilize all available resources.
The plane was flying from Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, to Karachi when it disappeared on Tuesday evening after reporting a “navigation system problem”, the authority said in a message published on the social network X.
At 9:21 p.m. Pakistan time (3:21 p.m. GMT), the aircraft was observed “rapidly descending and making an abrupt course change” and then radar contact and communications were lost about 155 nautical miles west of Karachi, the PAA said.
A rescue coordination center was set up and a search and rescue operation was launched at sea to locate the missing aircraft, according to the same source.
Preliminary data transmitted by the plane “indicated a loss of altitude, followed by an ascent, then a second sudden and dramatic loss of altitude,” according to flightradar24.com, a global flight tracking service.
A source close to the matter told AFP that navy ships and merchant ships were participating in search operations for the missing plane, with the support of military aircraft.
K2 Airways is a private Pakistani cargo airline operating scheduled and charter flights domestically and internationally.
Originally built in 1999, the plane involved served as an airliner for Aeroflot and Garuda Indonesia before being converted to a cargo configuration in 2012, according to Airfleets.net.
