Pakistan Considers Foreign Help to Find Black Box of Crashed K2 Cargo Jet

Pakistan is considering bringing in international deep-sea salvage experts to help recover the wreckage of the crashed K2 Airways cargo aircraft from the Arabian Sea, as authorities continue searching for the missing crew and the plane’s black box.

According to officials familiar with the investigation, the Bureau of Aircraft Safety Investigation (BASI) has proposed hiring foreign companies with expertise in deep-sea recovery due to the technical challenges involved in retrieving the aircraft from the seabed.

The government is reviewing the proposal, which could pave the way for cooperation with specialized international salvage organizations.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Navy and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency have continued coordinated search operations near Ormara, where the cargo aircraft crashed on July 7.

Authorities have decided to continue the operation using naval assets deployed in the area.

So far, search teams have recovered the aircraft’s tail section and a bag belonging to engineer Hamid. However, the crew, fuselage, engines, and the flight’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder remain missing.

The aircraft is believed to be resting at a depth of nearly 3,000 meters, making recovery significantly more difficult.

Families of the crew have urged the government to launch an international search effort to locate the black boxes, saying they are crucial to determining what caused the crash.

The affected families have also received an official response through the Prime Minister’s Portal after submitting their concerns. Under the portal’s mechanism, a Karachi-based human rights organization representative has been assigned to coordinate with and assist the families.

A separate petition has also been submitted through the Senate of Pakistan’s portal.

Aviation experts say recovering flight recorders from such depths would likely require advanced remotely operated underwater vehicles and foreign technical assistance, similar to the multinational operation conducted after the 2009 Air France Flight 447 crash.

The urgency is heightened because the aircraft’s underwater locator beacons were designed to transmit acoustic signals for only 30 days, meaning the chances of detecting them decrease significantly over time.

Relatives have also raised questions about one of the aircraft’s navigation systems.

According to Captain Rizwan Idris’ son, Yashib Rizwan, one of the aircraft’s two Inertial Reference Units (IRUs) was replaced in Sharjah before the flight.

Former US National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia said problems with an IRU could affect a pilot’s ability to determine an aircraft’s position and orientation, particularly during night flights over the ocean.

However, aviation experts caution that aircraft accidents are rarely caused by a single factor, and investigators have not established any link between the replacement of the navigation component and the crash.

The government has not publicly confirmed whether it will seek foreign assistance, while K2 Airways has also not commented on the matter.

The airline lost its only aircraft in the crash.