Pakistani officials said radar systems showed the aircraft descending rapidly and communication with the crew was lost.
A Boeing 737 cargo plane with five crew members on board lost contact with air traffic control on Tuesday night, Pakistani aviation authorities said.
The aircraft had reported a technical problem while on its way from Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Karachi. The incident has triggered search and rescue operations.
The plane was flying over the Arabian Sea near Ormara in Balochistan, Pakistan, when it went missing, according to local media Geo News.
Data shows rapid decent
Pakistan Airport Authority (PAA) said radar systems showed the aircraft descending rapidly and communication was lost.
According to global flight-tracking service, Flightradar24.com, preliminary data sent from the plane “indicated a loss of altitude, followed by a climb, and then a second, sudden and dramatic loss of altitude.”
The last transmitted data point placed the aircraft at 1,100 feet (335 meters) above sea level, with a vertical rate of minus 22,400 feet per minute, which is considered to be an extremely steep and abnormal rate of descent.
“Anytime you see something extreme like that, it catches your eye, but it is too soon to say what any of it means without more information,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an aerospace safety consultant, told Reuters.
Rescue operation underway
The PAA said a rescue coordination center has been activated and a search effort launched at sea to locate the missing aircraft has been deployed.
The aircraft was operated by K2 Airways, a private cargo airline in Pakistan that operates scheduled and charter flights domestically and internationally.
The airline said it was cooperating with Pakistani Civil Aviation Authority and other government agencies.
“We continue to pray, earnestly, for the safety of our colleagues,” the aircraft operator said on Facebook.
Passenger plane converted to cargo
Formerly, the aircraft was a passenger plane, manufactured in 1999, which had been operated by Aeroflot and Garuda Indonesia before being converted to a cargo configuration in 2012.
The 27-year-old missing aircraft is part of Boeing’s 737 family but is two generations older than the 737 Max version that was involved in a safety crisis.
The last time a jetliner accident took place in Karachi was in May 2020 when a Pakistani plane carrying 98 people crashed in a crowded neighborhood near the airport, after an apparent engine failure during landing.
Pakistan released a report concluded that the crash, in which all but one of the passengers perished, was caused by human error from the pilot, the co-pilot and air traffic control.
Edited by: Wesley Dockery
DW News
