A major emergency response has been mobilized in the Arabian Sea after a commercial cargo plane carrying five crew members vanished on Tuesday night near the coast of Karachi.
The Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) detailed the timeline through several social media posts. According to the agency, a K2 Airways Boeing 737 freighter was traveling from Sharjah to Karachi when the flight crew broadcasted an emergency notification regarding a navigational system malfunction at 2118 PST.
While the Karachi Area Control Centre immediately assumed tracking and provided flight guidance, communication was abruptly severed, prompting the activation of a regional rescue coordination center to lead an immediate multiagency maritime search.
Government representatives noted that the foundational trigger for the operational failure remains unknown and will be formally verified following a full investigation.
The search perimeter saw an immediate injection of military assets to assist local response teams. The Pakistani military dispatched the Navy warship PNS Zulfiqar to the suspected zone, while a Pakistan Air Force SAAB aircraft and a Pakistan Navy ATR plane were cleared for takeoff to conduct aerial reconnaissance.
Additionally, the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation ordered its commercial vessel, the Lahore, to redirect toward the search coordinates.
Assessing the digital telemetry, tracking platform Flightradar stated that preliminary ADS-B data "indicate a possible crash."