A cargo plane traveling from the UAE to Pakistan went missing on Tuesday, carrying five crew members.
The plane, a Boeing 737 labeled AP-BOI, disappeared from radar off the coast of Karachi, Pakistan, about 80 minutes into its two-hour flight from Sharjah, UAE.
The Pakistan Airports Authority said in a series of X posts on Tuesday that the flight reported a navigational system issue at around 9:18 p.m. local time, and was guided by the Karachi area control center.
Three minutes later, the flight was then observed “rapidly descending” before losing contact and communication with the control center, the authority wrote.
Per data by flight tracker FlightRadar24, the plane was seen circling off the coast of Pakistan before plunging at a rate of 22,400 feet per minute, and disappearing from the map. FlightRadar24 wrote in an X post that the data indicates a “possible crash in the sea southwest of Karachi.”
In a post on Facebook early Wednesday, K2 Airways shared the names of five crew members, including a pilot, a first officer, a load master, and two engineers. It said it was cooperating with government agencies for the investigation, and continued to “pray, earnestly, for the safety of our colleagues.”
K2 Airways is a Karachi-based freight carrier with a fleet of Boeing 737 planes. According to FlightRadar24, the ill-fated aircraft has been operating with K2 Airways since 2024. Before that, it was a passenger plane with Aeroflot and Garuda Indonesia, and a cargo plane with TNT Airways and ASL Airlines.
Representatives for K2 Airways and the Pakistan Airports Authority did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Pakistan has witnessed some severe plane crashes in the past two decades. In 2020, an Airbus A320, operated by Pakistan International Airlines, crashed near Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, killing 98 people on board.
In 2019, a Pakistan Army military plane crashed into a city in the country’s northern city of Rawalpindi, killing five crew members and 13 civilians on the ground.
And in 2010, an Airblue flight crashed north of the capital, Islamabad, killing more than 150 people on board.
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