A cargo plane with five crew members aboard went missing off the Pakistani port of Karachi late Tuesday after rapidly descending and losing contact with air traffic controllers on a flight from the United Arab Emirates, officials said.
Pakistan’s airport authority posted on X that search and rescue operations were underway in the Arabian Sea. The cause of the aircraft’s disappearance was not immediately known, reports AP.
The Boeing 737 was being operated by Karachi-based K2 Airways on a cargo flight from Sharjah in the UAE to Karachi when it reported a navigation system problem at 9:18 p.m. local time, the authority said.
Radar data showed the aircraft rapidly descending and making a sharp change in heading at about 9:21 p.m. before radar and radio contact were lost about 155 nautical miles (287 kilometres, 178 miles) west of Karachi, the authority said.
Authorities responded by activating the Rescue Coordination Centre, and search and rescue operations were launched at sea through various agencies to locate the missing aircraft, according to the airport authority.
Aviation expert Imran Aslam told local ARY News that it remains unclear what caused the aircraft to disappear from radar. He said that even if an aircraft suffers an engine failure, it would normally continue gliding rather than plunge suddenly. “I still cannot understand how the plane went down so abruptly instead of gliding,” he said.
