Families Urge International Assistance to Locate Flight Recorders
Relatives of the five crew members aboard a K2 Airways Boeing 737 cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan are urging an international search effort to find the flight recorders and determine the cause of the accident, according to multiple reports.
The aircraft, a 27-year-old Boeing 737-400 converted freighter, was flying from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Karachi when it went down on July 7, about 300 kilometers west of Karachi, reports said. Debris was recovered shortly after the crash, but the water in the area is about 3,000 meters deep, making recovery of the so-called “black boxes” a costly and complex operation.
Aviation experts familiar with deep-water crashes such as Air France 447 in 2009 say finding the recorders would likely require foreign assistance. The locator beacons on the plane were designed to transmit pings for only 30 days, adding urgency to the search.
Recovering the recorders could show whether a navigation system issue reported shortly before the crash was linked to a navigation component that relatives say was replaced before the flight, reports said. The pilots reported a navigational system issue at 9:18 p.m. while flying to Karachi, according to Pakistan’s airports authority. Local air traffic control tried to guide the plane, but three minutes later, radar contact was lost, reports said. Flightradar24 data showed erratic altitude changes before a steep descent.
Family Members Speak Out
“The search has to continue, and whatever resources can be deployed, locally and internationally, should be deployed,” Yashib Rizwan, the eldest son of Captain Rizwan Idris, told Reuters. “For us a transparent investigation is key.”
Abdur Rafay Siddiqui, son of flight engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui, also called for international assistance if needed, reports said. Both families have held funeral prayers after losing hope that the bodies would be recovered, according to reports.
The family of co-pilot Faisal Jatoi faced an agonizing wait for news, with his father-in-law, Ghulam Nabi Bahrani, telling Reuters: “That moment felt like doomsday for us.” Jatoi, who has a wife and a two-year-old son, was among those missing.
Government Response Questioned
Pakistan’s government has not responded to questions about whether it will seek foreign assistance for the search, reports said. K2 Airways, which lost its only plane in the crash, has also not responded to requests for comment, according to Reuters.
An industrial company with underwater search expertise told Reuters it had not heard of any requests by Pakistan for assistance from foreign companies or navies, and the Pakistan Airports Authority has not provided an update on the search operation for a week, reports said.
At a funeral prayer gathering for flight engineer Siddiqui in Karachi on Sunday, Jamaat-i-Islami leader Muslim Parvez criticized what he termed the government’s inadequate efforts to search the sea for bodies, and called for a comprehensive, transparent and impartial investigation, according to a report in Dawn.
“The sudden disappearance of the aircraft from radar is a major tragedy that requires a comprehensive, transparent and impartial investigation,” Parvez said, urging authorities to utilize all available resources to locate the victims and recover the flight data recorder.
The crash remains under investigation, with no official cause determined. The five crew members—two pilots, two engineers, and one support staffer—remain unaccounted for, and their bodies have not been recovered.