KARACHI, Pakistan – Rescue teams comprising Pakistani navy personnel and civilian search units have located and pulled out debris from a private cargo plane that vanished mid-approach to Karachi’s major southern port, officials confirmed Wednesday, with operations ongoing to locate five missing crew members who were on board the aircraft.
The aircraft, operated by Pakistan-based private aviation firm K2 Airways, had begun its journey from Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, before flight crews alerted ground control to a critical navigational system malfunction. Contact with air traffic control was lost late Tuesday, shortly after the distress report was filed.
According to an official update posted to the social platform X by Pakistan’s Airports Authority, combined search teams deployed on ships and patrol aircraft spent roughly 12 hours combing the northern Arabian Sea before successfully pinpointing the plane’s wreckage. Even with debris recovered, the hunt for the five missing crew members remains ongoing.
Three senior officials briefed on the details of the search operation, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the incident’s sensitive status, shared that rescuers face steep barriers to completing their mission. The wide, unmarked search zone in the Arabian Sea combined with rough monsoon-driven sea conditions have slowed search efforts considerably, they noted.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has formally extended his condolences to the families of the missing crew, a statement from his office confirmed, and issued orders to relevant government agencies to commit every available resource to the search-and-rescue operation.
K2 Airways later released a formal statement naming the five missing crew members: Captain Muhammad Rizwan Idris, First Officer Faisal Jatoi, flight engineers Muhammad Hamid and Muhammad Arif Siddiqui, and aircraft loader Muhammad Taufiq Khan. “We continue to pray earnestly for the safety of our colleagues,” the statement read.
Early data from Pakistani aviation authorities offers preliminary clues to the plane’s final moments. Pakistan’s Airports Authority said earlier this week that radar tracking showed the jet made an abrupt, unexplained course change and entered a rapid descent before all contact was lost at approximately 9:21 p.m. Tuesday. At the time of disappearance, the plane was roughly 155 nautical miles (178 miles, 287 kilometers) west of Karachi’s port.
Aviation specialist Imran Aslam told local Pakistani broadcaster ARY News late Tuesday that the root cause of the incident remains undetermined as of yet. Aslam noted that even in the event of a total engine failure, commercial cargo aircraft are designed to glide for extended periods rather than suffer a sudden, uncontrolled plunge. A full determination of the crash’s cause, he added, will only be possible after investigators retrieve additional evidence, including the plane’s black box flight recorders.
The crash marks the latest serious aviation incident near Karachi’s major airport. In May 2020, a passenger jet operated by state-owned Pakistan International Airlines carrying 98 people crashed into a densely populated residential neighborhood just outside the airport while on final approach. Ninety-seven of the 99 people on board died, along with multiple people on the ground, leaving just one survivor. A subsequent official government investigation concluded that the crash stemmed from preventable human error by both the flight crew and on-the-ground air traffic controllers.