Search under way for cargo plane missing off Pakistan
A K2 Airways Boeing 737-400 with five crew aboard lost contact after leaving Sharjah for Karachi, Pakistani aviation officials said.
By Daniel Okafor · Business Editor
3 min read
Pakistan has launched a search in the Arabian Sea for a Boeing cargo aircraft that disappeared with five crew members on board. The missing plane was the only aircraft operated by K2 Airways, a Karachi-based private cargo carrier, according to Al Jazeera.
The Pakistan Airports Authority said the Boeing 737-400 freighter was flying from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Karachi when it lost contact with air traffic control at about 9:18pm local time on Tuesday, or 16:18 GMT. The authority said the crew had reported a fault in the aircraft’s navigation system before contact was lost.
Flight data cited by Flightradar24 showed the aircraft making sharp changes in altitude in its final minutes. The tracking service recorded the plane losing nearly 1,525 metres, or 5,000 feet, in less than a minute, then climbing about 1,830 metres, or 6,000 feet, over the next 30 seconds.
Flightradar24 data then showed the aircraft entering a steep final descent from 11,140 metres, or 36,550 feet. Its last transmitted position placed it at 335 metres, or 1,100 feet, while descending at 22,400 feet per minute, roughly 400 kilometres per hour, according to Al Jazeera’s account of the tracking data.
The last known location was about 155 nautical miles west of Karachi, the Pakistan Airports Authority said. Al Jazeera reported the aircraft went missing off the coast of Ormara, a port town in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
Security sources told Al Jazeera that a Pakistani navy ship, two navy aircraft and a merchant vessel operated by the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation had joined the search. As of Wednesday, no wreckage or survivors had been found, according to Al Jazeera.
K2 Airways said in a statement Wednesday that it was cooperating fully with authorities involved in the search. “We continue to pray, earnestly, for the safety of our colleagues,” the airline said, according to Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera reported that the missing aircraft was 27 years old and had flown for six operators. The plane was first delivered to Russia’s Aeroflot in 1999 as a passenger jet, later flew for Garuda Indonesia and was converted into a freighter in 2012 for Belgium’s TNT Airways.
Aircraft tracking records cited by Al Jazeera showed the plane was withdrawn from service in June 2023 and parked in France for about 10 months. The Irish aircraft leasing company AerCap reactivated it in April 2024, then returned it to storage in Jakarta and later Karachi before it entered service with K2 Airways in December 2024.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief over the incident and offered sympathies to the families of the missing crew members, according to a statement cited by Al Jazeera.
If authorities confirm a crash, Al Jazeera reported, it would be Pakistan’s first major civilian air disaster since May 2020. In that incident, a Pakistan International Airlines aircraft crashed short of the runway in Karachi, killing 97 of the 99 people on board.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.