The crew of a Pakistan Navy ship have located and recovered some of the wreckage of a commercial cargo aircraft that had crashed in the Arabian Sea earlier this week.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737 operated as Flight 1732 by Pakistan's K2 Airways, had departed Sharjah in the UAE and was en route to Karachi when it made a sudden, rapid descent from an altitude of 10,600 metres while still more than 280 kilometres from its final destination at around 21:18 local time on Tuesday, July 7.
Pakistani authorities had initially reported K2 1732 as missing as its whereabouts were unknown after the crew sent out their last radio transmission, which stated that the aircraft was "rolling."
The Pakistan Navy then sent the guided-missile frigate PNS Zulfiquar and a patrol aircraft to the comb the area of the suspected crash site off the coast of Balochistan province. A Pakistan Air Force airborne early warning aircraft was also deployed to assist in the search.
Some of K2 1732's wreckage was found some 53 nautical miles off Balochistan's Gwadar district on the morning of Wednesday, July 8, approximately 12 hours after it was initially reported missing, the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) said in a statement.
Pieces of the aircraft were then brought aboard Zulfiquar. However, no traces of the five crewmembers have yet been found.
The search for K2 1732's missing crew will continue while additional parts and debris from the ill-fated aircraft are still being recovered from the water, the PAA said in a social media post in the early afternoon of Friday, July 10.