Pakistan Navy Search and Rescue Teams Continue Efforts
The Pakistan Navy search and rescue teams are battling rough seas as they try to find the five-member crew of a cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea. The search for the missing crew members has entered its second day, with no sign of them yet found.
The aircraft, operated by private carrier K2 Airways, reported a malfunction in its navigation system before losing radio and radar contact late Tuesday. The Pakistan Airports Authority confirmed that the plane’s navigation system malfunctioned, leading to a sharp change in heading and a rapid descent before losing contact.
Since then, ships and aircraft have continued to comb the waters nearly 300 kilometers southwest of Karachi, where the plane disappeared from radar while approaching Pakistan’s largest city from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The search area is vast, with strong winds, rough seas, and shifting ocean currents making it challenging for rescuers to locate the missing crew.
On Wednesday, the Pakistan Airports Authority said that Navy ships and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency located and recovered wreckage about 12 hours after the aircraft disappeared. The debris was recovered about 100 kilometers off Ormara, a coastal town on Pakistan’s southwestern Makran coast in Balochistan province.
Retired Rear Adm. Faisal Shah said that the search for the main wreckage could take months or even years because the aircraft is believed to have crashed in waters about 3,000 meters deep, requiring specialized equipment. He referred to the challenges illustrated by the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared in 2014 and has never been conclusively located despite years of multinational search efforts.
The families of the missing crew have been praying for a miracle as rescuers search for them in the Arabian Sea. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has directed authorities to use all available resources in the search and expressed sympathy with the families of the missing crew.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation. The Pakistan Airports Authority has confirmed that radar data indicated the aircraft made a sharp change in heading and rapidly descended before radar and radio contact were lost at about 9:21 p.m. Tuesday, about 287 kilometers west of Karachi.
Pakistan has experienced several fatal air crashes in recent decades. In May 2020, a Pakistan International Airlines flight carrying 99 people crashed into a densely populated neighborhood near the Karachi airport while attempting to land. All but two of the 99 people on board were killed. A government investigation later concluded that human error by the pilots and air traffic controllers caused the crash.
