Pakistani cargo plane crash kills five crew members, wreckage found

A Boeing 737-400 cargo plane operated by K2 Airways crashed into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan's coast, killing all five crew members aboard, with wreckage located 53 nautical miles south of Ormara. Source: heraldomx, cnn

What happened

The aircraft, operating as flight KTA1732, departed Sharjah, UAE, for Karachi, Pakistan. At 21:18 local time, the crew reported a navigational system issue and was guided by Karachi Air Traffic Control. Three minutes later, radar showed a rapid descent and sharp turn, and contact was lost 287 km west of Karachi. Source: infobae, mileniomx Flightradar24 data revealed erratic altitude changes—a 5,000-foot drop in under a minute, a 6,000-foot climb in 30 seconds, then a catastrophic fall from 36,550 feet. The last data point showed the aircraft at 1,100 feet with a descent rate of 22,400 feet per minute. Source: cnn The flight also experienced GNSS interference shortly after takeoff, degrading initial tracking data. Source: infobae

Search and wreckage

Pakistan's Navy and Maritime Security Agency deployed air and sea assets, including the frigate PNS Zulfiqar and an ATR aircraft. Source: infobae On July 8, wreckage was found 53 nautical miles south of Ormara. Source: heraldomx Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed condolences to the families of the five crew members: pilot Mohammad Rizwan Idrees, first officer Faisal Mehmood, loadmaster Muhammad Toufique Khan, and engineers Arif Siddiqui and Mohammad Hamid. Source: heraldomx, infobae

Background

The 27-year-old aircraft was originally delivered to Aeroflot in 1999 as a passenger plane and converted to a freighter in 2012. It joined K2 Airways in 2024 and was the airline's only aircraft. Source: cnn, mileniomx This is Pakistan's first fatal aviation accident since 2020. Source: cnn The cause remains under investigation.