The Pakistan Navy and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) on Wednesday located the wreckage of a cargo aircraft that went missing late Tuesday, 53 nautical miles south of the Ormara coast.
The recovery followed more than 12 hours of search efforts, according to a statement issued by the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA). It said the naval and aerial assets of the Navy and the PSMA remained engaged in rescue and recovery operations, with search teams combing the area around the site of the wreckage to locate missing crewmembers and gather further evidence related to the crash.
The K2 Airways Boeing 737-400 aircraft had five crewmembers onboard when it went missing around 155 nautical miles west of Karachi after losing contact with Air Traffic Control while flying from Sharjah.
In a statement, the cargo company said the aircraft was traveling from Sharjah to Karachi when contact with air traffic control was lost at 9:21 p.m. on Tuesday. It identified the missing crew as pilot Muhammad Rizwan Idris; first officer Faisal Mehmood; loadmaster Muhammad Taufiq; engineer Arif Siddiqui, and Muhammad Hamid.
According to available flight tracking data, the flight was cruising normally at an altitude of 35,000 feet and a speed of 790 kilometers per hour when it encountered unusual circumstances. The data shows the plane abruptly making a U-turn before entering a rapid descent and eventually disappearing from radar.