Rescuers Find K2 Airways Wreckage in the Arabian Sea, But the Search for Five Crew Is Far From Over

Wreckage from a missing K2 Airways cargo plane has been found in the Arabian Sea, more than twelve hours after the Boeing 737 vanished from radar over Pakistani airspace. All five crew members on board remain unaccounted for.

The Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) confirmed on Wednesday that the Pakistan Navy (PN) and Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) had 'successfully located and identified wreckage of K2 Airways Cargo B737 which was declared missing last night'. The debris was recovered 53 nautical miles south of the coastal town of Ormara, in Balochistan province.

Search Continues For Missing Crew

Despite the discovery, officials stressed that the operation is not over. 'Various air and sea borne assets were employed by PN and PMSA to locate the wreckage and efforts are underway to find the missing crew members,' the PAA said.

Among the assets deployed were the Pakistan Navy frigate PNS Zulfiqar, a Pakistan Air Force Saab 2000 Erieye airborne early warning aircraft, and a Pakistan Navy ATR 72 maritime patrol plane. The commercial vessel PNSC Lahore, operated by the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation, is also assisting.

K2 Airways named the five crew members as Captain Mohammad Rizwan Idrees, First Officer Faisal Mehmood, Load Master Muhammad Toufique Khan, and engineers Arif Siddiqui and Mohammad Hamid. The airline said it continues to 'pray, earnestly, for the safety of our colleagues'. The airline has not confirmed whether all families have been notified.

What Happened Before Contact Was Lost

Flight KTA1732 departed Sharjah International Airport in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday evening, bound for Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. The crew reported a 'navigational system issue' at 9:18pm Pakistan Standard Time and was being guided by Karachi Area Control Centre, according to the PAA.

Three minutes later, radar showed the aircraft descending rapidly and changing heading sharply. The aircraft lost contact at around 9:21pm, roughly 155 nautical miles west of Karachi.

Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 recorded the aircraft dropping from a cruising altitude of 35,000ft to 29,475ft, before climbing back to 36,650ft. Its final recorded position placed it at just 1,100ft, descending at a rate of 22,400ft per minute. Flightradar24 also noted that the aircraft, along with others in the region, had experienced GNSS interference shortly after take-off from Sharjah, which briefly degraded the quality of the tracking data before normal signal resumed.

An Ageing Freighter On Its Final Flight

The aircraft, registered AP-BOI, was a 27-year-old Boeing 737-400 originally delivered to Aeroflot in 1999. It was converted into a freighter in 2012 and had previously flown for Garuda Indonesia, TNT Airways, ASL Airlines Belgium and FedEx before joining K2 Airways in October 2024.

It was the Karachi-based carrier's only operational freighter aircraft, which describes K2 Airways as aiming to connect businesses through cargo operations since its founding in 2018.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he felt 'deep sorrow, grief' over the plane's disappearance and directed authorities to speed up the search. President Asif Ali Zardari also voiced 'profound concern and grief' in a statement posted on X, offering his sympathies to the families of the missing crew.

If confirmed as a fatal crash, the loss of Flight 1732 would be Pakistan's first fatal air disaster since 2020, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320 crashed in Karachi, killing 97 people. The search continues, and authorities have not yet confirmed any casualties.