K2 Airways Cargo Plane Vanishes Over Arabian Sea After Sudden 22,400ft-a-Minute Descent

A K2 Airways Boeing 737-400 cargo aircraft flying from Sharjah to Karachi was reported missing over the Arabian Sea late on Tuesday, according to the Pakistan Airports Authority and the Aviation Safety Network. The aircraft was last recorded 155 nautical miles off Karachi after reporting a navigation problem, PAA said.

The aircraft, operating as flight KTA1732 and registered AP-BOI, was carrying five crew members. It had reported a navigation system fault to air traffic controllers shortly before contact was lost, the PAA said in a statement.

Fault Reported Minutes Before Descent

The crew alerted Karachi's Area Control Centre to a navigational issue at around 9.18pm Pakistan Standard Time (2118 PST), while roughly 155 nautical miles from the city. Controllers guided the aircraft and instructed it to maintain its heading.

Three minutes later, at 9.21pm (2121 PST), radar showed the aircraft making a sudden change of heading paired with a rapid loss of altitude, according to PAA. Radar contact and all communication were lost shortly afterwards at the same distance west of Karachi.

Descent Rate Confirmed by Tracking Data

Its final recorded data point placed the aircraft at approximately 1,100ft above mean sea level. Flightradar24 said preliminary ADS-B data indicated a possible crash in the sea southwest of Karachi. The PAA has described the descent as rapid but has not released an official figure for the rate of descent; some unverified reports online have cited specific numbers, though these have not been confirmed by PAA, Flightradar24 or the Aviation Safety Network. The aircraft, along with others in the region, had experienced GNSS interference shortly after departure from Sharjah, which briefly degraded tracking data before signal was restored.

The Aviation Safety Network separately confirmed the aircraft as missing 155 nautical miles off Karachi, citing initial reports of the navigation problem.

Navy and Air Force Deployed to Search Area

The PAA said its Rescue Coordination Centre was activated immediately and that a search and rescue operation involving multiple agencies had begun at sea. No details on the crew's condition had been released at the time of writing.

Pakistan Strategic Forum, an open-source defence and aviation monitoring account, reported that the naval vessel PNS Zulfiqar had been diverted to the search area. It added that a Pakistan Air Force Saab surveillance aircraft had launched from Bolhari, alongside a Navy ATR-72 from Turbat and the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation vessel Lahore.

Officials have not confirmed whether the aircraft crashed. The cause of the reported fault and the loss of contact remains under investigation.

How This Compares to MH370

The disappearance inevitably invites comparison with Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished over the Indian Ocean in March 2014 with 239 people on board and has never been found. Both involved a loss of radar contact over open water and a large multi-agency search.

The differences are significant, though. MH370 gave no warning and no distress call before it disappeared, and the search stretched on for years without resolution. KTA1732's crew reported a specific fault and asked for guidance before contact was lost within roughly three minutes, and a coordinated naval and air search was launched within hours.

Cargo flights like KTA1732 form part of the routine air link between the Gulf and Pakistan, carrying freight rather than passengers, but a missing aircraft still triggers the same scale of naval and air force response as any other emergency at sea. The GNSS interference reported in the region shortly before contact was lost is likely to feature in any formal investigation, an issue that has affected other flights in Gulf airspace recently.