A cargo aircraft en route from Sharjah to Karachi vanished from radar above the Arabian Sea late Tuesday night, according to a Dawn report.
The K2 Airways Boeing 737-400 lost communication with air traffic control roughly 300 kilometres west of Karachi as it neared Pakistani airspace, the report added. Prior to the incident, the pilot had reported a navigation malfunction and requested support from the regional control centre.
The Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) confirmed that five crew members were aboard the flight. According to the PAA, the crew alerted authorities to a navigational system fault at 9:18 PM and received immediate guidance from the Karachi Area Control Centre (ACC). By 9:21 PM, however, controllers observed that the aircraft was “rapidly descending” and executing a sharp turn in its course. Shortly thereafter, both radar contact and all communications were lost, approximately 287 kilometres west of Karachi.
Flight-tracking service FlightRadar noted that preliminary ADS-B data showed an initial drop in altitude, followed by a climb, and then a second abrupt and severe descent. The final data transmission placed the aircraft at 1,100 feet above mean sea level, with a recorded vertical descent rate of -22,400 feet per minute.
Investigations also revealed that the aircraft had encountered a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) issue soon after departure, which resulted in degraded navigational data while still near Sharjah.
