Pakistani authorities confirmed the location of the wreckage of a Boeing 737 cargo plane on Wednesday morning (8), which had disappeared overnight on Tuesday (7) after reporting a failure in the navigation system.
Conforme informações da Autoridade Aeroportuária do Paquistão, os fragmentos da aeronave foram encontrados em alto-mar, a 98 quilômetros ao sul da região portuária de Ormara. The rescue operation took place approximately 12 hours after contact with the flight was lost.
Search operations for five crew members who were on board the aircraft are still ongoing. An official statement highlighted that the Pakistan Navy and Maritime Security Agency employ “varied air and sea resources” to find the team members.
Details of the incident with the cargo aircraft
The disappearance of the Boeing 737 occurred on Tuesday night (7), when the cargo plane, which was en route from Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, to Karachi, Pakistan, reported a complication in the navigation system, according to Pakistani aviation authorities.
K2 Airways, the company responsible for operating the flight, confirmed that the aircraft was carrying five people: two pilots, two engineers and a member of the support team.
The Pakistan Airports Authority reported that communication about the problem occurred at 9:18 pm local time, or 3:18 pm in Brasília time. Contact with air traffic control was abruptly interrupted minutes after this warning.
Air traffic controllers attempted to guide the aircraft, however, in just three minutes, the radar registered a sudden drop in altitude, and communication ceased. The plane was approximately 287 kilometers west of the city of Karachi.
Information collected by the Flightradar24 monitoring portal reveals that the plane performed sudden and pronounced altitudinal movements in the moments before its disappearance.
The platform detailed that the freighter lost altitude of around 1,500 meters in less than a minute. It then rose approximately 1,800 meters in just 30 seconds, before beginning a pronounced dive.
The last data transmission indicated that the plane was about 335 meters high, in a rapid descent of 22,400 feet per minute, the equivalent of 400 km/h, behavior considered highly atypical by aviation experts.
“Behavior as extreme as this is cause for warning, but it is still premature to determine the cause without more data,” noted aviation safety consultant Anthony Brickhouse in a press statement.
The Boeing 737-400 model, involved in the incident, belongs to the oldest line of the 737 family, predating the controversial 737 MAX by two generations. This specific plane, according to data from Flightradar24, was initially delivered to Aeroflot, in Russia, as a passenger aircraft in 1999, and was only adapted for cargo transport in 2012, which adds a complex operational history to the aircraft’s profile.
K2 Airways operates this Boeing 737-400 as its only aircraft in the fleet, having incorporated it in 2024. The company stated that it is fully cooperating with the investigations conducted by the authorities.
The confirmation of fatalities in this event will represent the first fatal air disaster in Pakistan since 2020, the year in which a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320 crashed during a landing in Karachi, resulting in 97 victims.
