Key facts
- Relatives of five crew members aboard a crashed K2 Airways cargo plane are seeking international assistance to find the flight recorders.
- The Boeing 737 cargo plane crashed into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan on July 7.
- The crash site is approximately 3,000 meters deep, requiring specialized equipment for recovery.
- The plane's locator beacons have a 30-day transmission limit.
- Pilots reported a navigational system issue prior to the crash, and a component was reportedly replaced before the flight.
Relatives of the five crew members who died when a K2 Airways Boeing 737 cargo plane crashed into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan on July 7 are urging for international assistance in recovering the flight recorders. The depth of the water, approximately 3,000 meters (9,800 feet), makes a deepwater search costly and likely to require foreign expertise.
The locator beacons on the 27-year-old aircraft are designed to transmit for only 30 days, adding urgency to the recovery efforts. Families are seeking a transparent investigation into the cause, with a particular focus on a reported navigational system issue. Yashib Rizwan, son of Captain Rizwan Idris, emphasized the need for continued search efforts, both locally and internationally, for a transparent investigation. Engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui's son, Abdur Rafay Siddiqui, echoed the call for international help if necessary.
Both families have held funeral prayers, having lost hope of recovering the bodies. Pakistan's government has not publicly commented on seeking foreign assistance, and K2 Airways, which lost its sole aircraft in the incident, has not responded to requests for comment. Aviation experts note that such deepwater recovery operations are complex and expensive, citing the Air France 447 crash in 2009 as an example where foreign assistance was crucial. The pilots reportedly communicated a navigational system issue shortly before the crash, and a replacement part for an inertial reference unit (IRU), which provides critical flight data, was reportedly fitted in Sharjah before the flight. Experts suggest that a malfunctioning IRU could lead pilots to distrust instruments and struggle with orientation, especially during night flights over water without visual references, though the direct link to this crash remains unclear.