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View all search resultsPakistan searches for Boeing cargo plane missing off Karachi
The plane, operated by the private K2 Airways, had five crew members on board and was en route from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Karachi when it went missing on Tuesday evening after reporting a "navigational system issue," the authority said.
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The company logo for Boeing is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, the United States, on March 11, 2019. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)
P
akistan was searching Wednesday for a Boeing cargo plane missing off the coast of Karachi after radar showed it "rapidly descending," the Pakistan Airport Authority (PAA) said in a post on X.
The plane, operated by the private K2 Airways, had five crew members on board and was en route from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Karachi when it went missing on Tuesday evening after reporting a "navigational system issue," the authority said.
At 21:21 pm Pakistan time, the aircraft was observed on radar "rapidly descending and with rapid heading change," and communication contact was lost about 155 nautical miles west of Karachi, the PAA said.
A rescue coordination center was activated and a search effort launched at sea to locate the missing aircraft, it added.
Preliminary data sent from the plane "indicated a loss of altitude, followed by a climb, and then a second, sudden and dramatic loss of altitude," according to Flightradar24.com, a global flight-tracking service.
The plane reported a navigational system issue at 9:18 p.m. Pakistan Standard Time (1618 GMT) while flying toward Karachi, the airports authority said.
Local air traffic control tried to guide the aircraft, but three minutes later radar systems showed the plane descending rapidly and communication was lost, the authority said. The flight was about 155 nautical miles (287 km) west of Karachi at the time, according to the statement.
Flightradar24 tracking data showed chaotic final minutes as the plane plunged about 5,000 feet in less than a minute, surged back some 6,000 feet in just 30 seconds, before a catastrophic dive from 36,550 feet.
The last transmitted data point placed the aircraft at 1,100 feet above sea level, with a vertical rate of minus 22,400 feet per minute - about 400 kilometres per hour - an extremely steep and abnormal rate of descent.
K2 Airways is a private cargo airline in Pakistan that operates scheduled and charter flights domestically and internationally.
Manufactured in 1999, the plane flew as a passenger plane for Aeroflot and Garuda Indonesia before being converted to a cargo configuration in 2012, according to Airfleets.net.
