The navy’s search teams have recovered additional debris from a cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea earlier this week, and investigators will analyse the wreckage as the search for the aircraft’s five missing crew members entered its third day.
The Pakistan Airports Authority said in a post on X that search-and-rescue operations by the Pakistan navy and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency remained underway in deep waters, with aircraft and other assets deployed in a coordinated effort to locate the missing crew.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
The cargo plane, operated by Karachi-based private carrier K2 Airways, disappeared from radar late Tuesday while flying from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Karachi, Pakistan, after reporting a malfunction in its navigation system.
The Navy recovered the first pieces of wreckage on Wednesday about 100km off the coastal town of Ormara on Pakistan’s southwestern Makran coast in Balochistan province.
Officials have said the aircraft’s main fuselage and all five crew members remain missing.
As the search entered its third day, relatives of the crew waited anxiously for news, clinging to hope that their loved ones might be found alive.
Nazim Jatoi, the father of co- pilot Faisal Jatoi, urged the government to enlist companies with expertise in locating aircraft black boxes in deep water, saying the flight data and cockpit voice recorders would be crucial to determining what caused the crash.
“The wreckage recovered so far is the lighter debris that remained afloat and was spotted during the search,” he said.
“The government should make every effort to locate the heavier sections of the aircraft that sank after the crash.”
Family members of the plane’s flight engineer, Muhammad Arif Siddiqui, also quietly sat outside their home in Karachi, receiving relatives as they awaited news.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has directed authorities to use all available resources to locate the missing crew members, while K2 Airways said it is extending full cooperation to civil aviation authorities investigating the crash. — AP
