KARACHI: A cargo plane that took off from Sharjah crashed into the sea after disappearing from radar off the coast of Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif extended his condolences to the families of the five crew on board, his government said in a post on X. It said he “expressed profound grief and sorrow over the tragic incident” and added that the K2 Airways plane went down in the Arabian Sea.
“The Prime Minister has extended heartfelt condolences to the families of the five crew members aboard the aircraft,” the government post said.
Air traffic control lost contact with the K2 Airways Cargo 737 aircraft on Tuesday night after a navigation system problem occurred while the plane was on its way to Karachi. Flight data showed the plane experienced a loss of altitude and a high rate of descent, followed by a climb and then a second sudden loss of altitude, suggesting it crashed into the sea.
Pakistan aviation authorities said earlier on Tuesday that a search and rescue operation was under way. The airline posted an update on Facebook, saying the aircraft “lost contact with air traffic control at about 21.21 hours according to Pakistan time”.
“Search and rescue operations are being conducted by the concerned organisations,” the airline added.
The airline released the names of the five people on board the flight ‐ pilot Mohammad Rizwan Idrees; first officer Faisal Mehmood; load master Muhammad Toufique Khan; and engineers Arif Siddiqui and Mohammad Hamid.
K2 Airways, which has its headquarters in Karachi, is a private cargo airline established in 2018 under the airline charter licence issued by the Pakistani government.
The Boeing 737 began service with K2 Airways in 2024 and had previously been operated by the Russian airline Aeroflot in 1999 and by Garuda Indonesia in 2004. In 2012, it was converted into a cargo plane and operated by TNT Airways and ASL Airlines, before being transferred to a Pakistani operator to move cargo around the Arabian Gulf and the wider region.
