Pakistan searches for Boeing cargo plane missing over Arabian Sea

The Karachi-bound aircraft lost contact with air traffic control after reporting a navigational ⁠system fault.Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan is searching for a Boeing cargo aircraft missing over the Arabian Sea with five crew members on board.The Karachi-bound 737-400 plane operated by a Pakistani carrier took off from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and lost contact with air traffic control about 9:18pm (16:18 GMT) on Tuesday after reporting a navigational ⁠system fault, the Pakistan-airports-authority" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="160986" data-entity-type="organization">Pakistan Airports Authority said.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3At least 22 killed as Pakistani military helicopter crashes in Kashmirlist 2 of 3Why is Pakistan selling its JF-17 fighter jets to Bangladesh and others?list 3 of 3A year after Air India crash killed 260: Do we know what happened?end of listMinutes later, data from Flightradar24, a global flight-tracking service, showed the plane losing nearly 1,525 metres (5,000ft) of altitude in less than a minute before climbing about 1,830 metres (6,000ft) in the next 30 seconds. It then entered a final, near-vertical descent from a height of 11,140 metres (36,550ft).Its last transmitted position placed it at 335 metres (1,100ft), descending at 22,400 feet per minute, or about 400 kilometres per hour. All contact was lost about 155 nautical miles (287km or 178 miles) west of Karachi.Security sources told Al Jazeera a Pakistani navy ship, a merchant vessel operated by the Pakistan-national-shipping-corporation" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="161055" data-entity-type="organization">Pakistan National Shipping Corporation and two navy aircraft are taking part in the search.No wreckage or survivors have been found so far.“We continue to pray, earnestly, for the safety of our colleagues,” K2 Airways, the Karachi-based private cargo airline that operated the flight, said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that it was fully cooperating with authorities on the search.It was the only plane in the K2 Airways fleet.If a crash is confirmed, the incident would mark Pakistan’s first major civilian air disaster since May 2020 when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed short of the runway in Karachi, killing 97 of the 99 people on board.