Pakistan cargo crash families push for international help to find black boxes

Families of Pakistan Cargo Plane Crash Crew Urge International Search for Flight Recorders

KARACHI, July 17 (Reuters) - Relatives of the five crew members on a Boeing 737 cargo aircraft that crashed into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan on July 7 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 recovered in the days after the crash. The water depth in the area reaches approximately 3,000 meters. Aviation specialists with experience in deep-water recoveries, including the 2009 Air France 447 incident, state that locating the recorders would require a substantial underwater operation and likely foreign technical support. The locator beacons installed on the 27-year-old aircraft were rated to transmit signals for 30 days.

Recovery of the devices could clarify whether a navigation system fault reported minutes before the crash was connected to an inertial reference unit replaced during the aircraft’s stop in Sharjah. Pakistan has issued no public statements on search operations in the past week. An industrial firm with underwater search capabilities informed Reuters that it had received no requests from Pakistani authorities for assistance from foreign companies or naval forces.

Yashib Rizwan, eldest son of Captain Rizwan Idris, told Reuters that continued search efforts using all available local and international resources were necessary and that a transparent investigation remained the priority for the families. Abdur Rafay Siddiqui, son of engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui, also requested international assistance if required. Both families have conducted funeral prayers after concluding that recovery of the bodies was unlikely.

The Pakistani government has not replied to inquiries regarding plans to request foreign support for the search. K2 Airways, which lost its sole aircraft in the incident, has not responded to requests for comment.

Navigation system reports

According to Pakistan’s airports authority, the pilots reported a navigation system problem at 9:18 p.m. Pakistan time during the flight from Sharjah to Karachi. Air traffic control provided guidance, but three minutes later radar data indicated a rapid descent and radio contact ceased. Flightradar24 tracking showed the aircraft losing roughly 5,000 feet in under one minute, regaining about 6,000 feet in 30 seconds, and then entering an uncontrolled descent from 36,550 feet.

Ghulam Nabi, father-in-law of co-pilot Faisal Jatoi, stated that the aircraft had remained in Sharjah for approximately ten days while awaiting a replacement component from the United States following a maintenance issue. Yashib Rizwan reported that one of the two inertial reference units, which supply position, speed, and attitude data to cockpit instruments, was changed in Sharjah.

Former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia noted that an inertial reference unit malfunction can render cockpit instruments unreliable, particularly at night over water where visual references are absent. Aircraft accidents typically involve multiple contributing factors, and no determination has been made on whether the unit replacement played a role in this event.

A comparable inertial reference system malfunction occurred in the 2007 Adam Air accident in Indonesia. Investigators determined that the crew focused on erroneous instrument data, did not recognize a steep bank, and lost control, resulting in the loss of all 102 people on board. Locator signals from that aircraft’s recorders were detected roughly three weeks after the crash during a search supported by the U.S. Navy; full recovery from about 2,000 meters of water required several months and specialized remotely operated equipment.

U.S. aviation analyst Todd Curtis stated on the Flight Safety Detectives podcast that Pakistan would be unlikely to conduct a comparable recovery unless a strong justification existed, given that the aircraft was an older cargo model rather than a newer passenger aircraft.

(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)