Search Underway for Boeing 737 That Vanished Over Arabian Sea
A major search and rescue operation is underway in the Arabian Sea after a Boeing 737 cargo plane vanished from radar and lost contact with air traffic control late Tuesday night.
The aircraft, operated by Pakistan-based K2 Airways, was flying from Sharjah International Airport in the United Arab Emirates to Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan, when the crew reported a navigational system issue at about 9:18 p.m. local time. Air traffic controllers at the Karachi Area Control Centre attempted to guide the aircraft, but three minutes later, radar showed the plane making a sharp change in heading along with a steep, rapid loss of altitude. Radar and radio contact were lost entirely at approximately 9:21 p.m., roughly 155 nautical miles west of Karachi, over open water near Ormara, Balochistan.
Five crew members were on board: Capt. Mohammad Rizwan Idrees, First Officer Faisal Mehmood, load master Muhammad Toufique Khan, and engineers Arif Siddiqui and Muhammad Hamid.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed "deep grief" and offered his "heartfelt sympathy" to the families of those on board. The Pakistan Airports Authority said a coordinated search and rescue effort involving multiple agencies was launched shortly after contact was lost, including a Pakistani navy ship, a merchant vessel and two navy aircraft.
What Flight Data Shows
According to flight-tracking service Flightradar24, the aircraft's final minutes were marked by extreme and erratic altitude changes. The plane reportedly dropped about 5,000 feet in under a minute, climbed roughly 6,000 feet over the next 30 seconds, then entered a steep, near-vertical descent from about 36,550 feet. The last transmitted data point placed the aircraft at 1,100 feet above sea level, descending at a rate of 22,400 feet per minute, an extremely abnormal and steep rate of descent.
K2 Airways said in a statement that it is fully cooperating with the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority and other government agencies investigating the incident.
As of Wednesday, Flightradar24 reported that authorities had recovered wreckage from the aircraft approximately 53 nautical miles south of Ormara, indicating the plane had crashed into the Arabian Sea. The status and condition of the five crew members had not been confirmed at the time of this report.
The Plane's History
The missing aircraft, a 27-year-old Boeing 737-400 registered as AP-BOI, had a lengthy service history before joining K2 Airways. It was originally delivered to Russia's Aeroflot as a passenger jet in 1999, later flew for Garuda Indonesia, and was converted into a freighter in 2012 for Belgium's TNT Airways. Records show the aircraft was withdrawn from service in 2023 before being reactivated and eventually entering service with K2 Airways, a Karachi-based cargo carrier, in December 2024. It was reportedly the airline's only aircraft.
If confirmed as a fatal crash, it would mark Pakistan's first such aviation disaster since 2020, when a Pakistan International Airlines flight crashed short of the runway in Karachi, killing 97 people.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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