Pakistan has launched a sea and air search for a Boeing 737-400 cargo aircraft that vanished over the Arabian Sea late on Tuesday with five crew members on board, after the jet reported a navigation problem and then dropped out of the sky in a matter of seconds.
The freighter was operated by K2 Airways, a small Karachi-based cargo carrier, and had taken off from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates bound for Karachi. According to the Pakistan Airports Authority, the crew reported a navigational system fault at around 9:18pm local time, and all contact was lost about three minutes later, roughly 155 nautical miles west of Karachi.
What makes the case unusual is how quickly the situation unravelled. Flight-tracking data cited by Al Jazeera showed the aircraft shedding close to 5,000 feet of altitude in under a minute, then climbing about 6,000 feet over the next half minute, before entering a final near-vertical descent from around 36,550 feet. Its last recorded position placed it at just 1,100 feet, dropping at about 22,400 feet per minute.
K2 Airways confirmed the flight was carrying two pilots, two engineers and a loadmaster. In a statement, the airline said it was “fully co-operating” with Pakistan’s civil aviation authority and other agencies, and that it continued to pray for the safety of its crew. Notably, the missing jet was the only aircraft in the carrier’s fleet.
The search has drawn in significant resources. Security sources told Al Jazeera that a Pakistan navy ship, a merchant vessel operated by the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation and two navy aircraft are taking part in the effort. So far, no wreckage or survivors have been found.
The aircraft itself has a long history. Identified as registration AP-BOI, the 27-year-old airframe was delivered to Russia’s Aeroflot as a passenger jet in 1999, later flew for Garuda Indonesia, and was converted into a freighter in 2012 for Belgium’s TNT Airways. It was withdrawn from service in June 2023 and parked in France for months before being reactivated in 2024 and eventually entering service with K2 Airways in December that year.
If the loss is confirmed, it would mark Pakistan’s first major civilian air disaster since May 2020, when a Pakistan International Airlines jet crashed short of the runway in Karachi, killing 97 of the 99 people on board. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has expressed grief over the incident and offered sympathies to the families of the missing crew.
For now, the picture remains incomplete. Investigators have not confirmed what caused the reported navigation fault, nor whether the cargo included any hazardous goods. Until wreckage is located, the sequence that sent a routine overnight freight run into a sudden dive over open water will remain the central question of the search.
