Rescuers are desperately still searching for five missing passengers after the wreckage of a Boeing 737 plane that vanished off the coast of Pakistan was located.
Pakistan’s Airports Authority said efforts were underway to find those who were on board the private cargo plane which had been travelling from Karachi, a city in southern Pakistan, to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.
The Boeing 737 — operated by K2 Airways — rapidly descended and made a sharp turn before losing contact with air traffic controllers on Tuesday at 21:21 local time.
Chilling details have since emerged that reveal what was happening in the cockpit minutes before the vessel vanished.
The pilot’s final transmission has revealed the pilot had raised the alarm that the plane was “rolling or floating”, which refers to a phase of flight and a landing error, respectively.
On Wednesday, the country’s navy and maritime rescue agency said after searching for 12 hours, they had “successfully located and identified wreckage of K2 Airways Cargo B737 which was declared missing last night”, the PAA statement posted on X stated.
The wreckage was found in the Arabian Sea, off Ormara town on Pakistan’s southern coast, it said.
“Efforts are underway to find the missing crew members,” the PAA added.
Pakistan civil aviation authorities, the navy and the air force were directed to intensify search and rescue operations and use all available resources to locate the missing plane, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s office prior to successfully locating it.
The authority published images of personnel lifting pieces of the fuselage from a small boat onto a larger vessel and the red and white debris with the words “K2 Air” laid out on the ship’s deck.
The cause of the incident is not yet known.
The last major aviation incident in Pakistan involved a domestic passenger flight in 2020.
In that incident, a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed while approaching Karachi airport, killing all but two of the 99 people on board.
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