By Akhtar Soomro and Ariba Shahid
KARACHI, July 17 (Reuters) – The families of the five crew members who perished when a Boeing 737 cargo aircraft plunged into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan last week are calling for an international effort to locate the flight recorders and establish the cause of the accident.
Debris from the K2 Airways freighter was retrieved shortly after the July 7 crash, but the sea in that location reaches a depth of roughly 3,000 m (9,800 ft). Retrieving the “black boxes” would require a costly deep‑water operation that most likely needs foreign expertise, according to aviation specialists familiar with similar deep‑sea recoveries such as Air France 447 in 2009.
The aircraft’s 30‑day underwater locator beacons, installed on the 27‑year‑old jet, are nearing the end of their operational window. Success in finding the recorders could clarify whether a reported navigation system problem shortly before the crash is linked to a component that relatives say was replaced prior to departure.
Pakistan has not released any public update on the search for a week, and a company with deep‑sea search capabilities told Reuters it has not been approached by Pakistani authorities for assistance from foreign firms or navies.
“The search must continue, and any available resources—local or international—should be deployed,” said Yashib Rizwan, the eldest son of Captain Rizwan Idris. “For us, a transparent investigation is essential.”
Abdur Rafay Siddiqui, son of engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui, echoed the call for international help if needed. Both families have already conducted funeral prayers after losing hope of recovering the bodies.
Pakistan’s government has not responded to inquiries about whether it will seek foreign assistance for the recovery operation. K2, the airline that lost its only plane in the incident, has also not commented.
NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEM ISSUE
The pilots reported a navigational system malfunction at 9:18 p.m. Pakistan time while en route from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Karachi, the country’s airports authority said last week.
Local air traffic control attempted to guide the flight, but three minutes later radar indicated a rapid descent and communications were lost. Flightradar24 data showed the aircraft dropped about 5,000 ft in less than a minute, then climbed 6,000 ft in 30 seconds before entering a catastrophic dive from an altitude of 36,550 ft.
The plane had been in Sharjah for about ten days before the fatal flight, awaiting a replacement part from the U.S. after a maintenance fault, according to Ghulam Nabi, the father‑in‑law of co‑pilot Faisal Jatoi.
One of the aircraft’s two inertial reference units (IRUs), which provide position, speed, and orientation data to the cockpit displays, was replaced in Sharjah, said Yashib Rizwan, the captain’s son.
“If you have a problem with your IRU, you just can’t rely on the instruments,” explained John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member. He added that pilots flying at night over the ocean without visual cues can struggle to determine the aircraft’s orientation.
Aircraft accidents are typically the result of multiple factors, and it remains uncertain whether the IRU replacement contributed to the crash. A similar inertial reference system malfunction played a role in the 2007 Adam Air crash in Indonesia, where investigators found that pilots became fixated on erroneous information, failed to notice a steep right bank, and lost control before the jet plunged into the sea, killing all 102 aboard.
Pings from the Adam Air black boxes were detected about three weeks after the accident in a search assisted by the U.S. Navy. Recovering those recorders from roughly 2,000 m of water required a months‑long, multimillion‑dollar effort using a specialized remotely operated vehicle.
U.S. aviation expert Todd Curtis, speaking on the “Flight Safety Detectives” podcast, said Pakistan was unlikely to mount a comparable recovery unless there was a compelling reason, given that the K2 aircraft was an aging cargo jet rather than a current‑production passenger model.
(Reporting by Akhtar Soomro and Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Dan Catchpole in Seattle; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Rick Noack; Editing by Jamie Freed)
