A photo of a K2 Airways plane. — K2 AIRWAYS WEBSITE
KARACHI:
Pakistani authorities are considering engaging foreign deep-sea salvage specialists to assist in the recovery of the missing K2 Airways cargo aircraft that crashed into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Ormara, as efforts continue to locate the crew, fuselage, engines and the aircraft’s black box.
According to sources, the Bureau of Aircraft Safety Investigation, which is leading the probe into the crash, has proposed to the government that internationally experienced salvage companies be engaged for the technically complex deep-sea recovery operation.
Following the government’s deliberations, cooperation with specialised international salvage organisations is expected to pave the way for an advanced underwater recovery effort.
The search operation continued on Sunday, with the Pakistan Navy and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency maintaining coordinated operations in the crash area off the Balochistan coast near Ormara.
Sources said it has been decided to continue the search operation on a sustained basis 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, while efforts to locate the crew, fuselage, engines and the flight’s black box are still underway.
Relatives are urging an international search effort to find the flight recorders to determine the cause.
The affected families have also received an official response through the Prime Minister’s Portal after submitting a request. Under the portal’s mechanism, a representative of a human rights organisation in Karachi has been appointed to coordinate with and assist the affected families.
The families had also submitted a petition regarding the crash through the Senate of Pakistan’s portal.
Debris from the K2 Airways freighter was recovered shortly after the July 7 crash, but the water in the area is about 3,000 metres deep.
Finding the “black boxes” would require a costly underwater search likely to need foreign assistance, according to aviation experts familiar with deepwater crashes such as Air France 447 in 2009.
The locator beacons on the 27-year-old plane were designed to transmit pings for only 30 days. Recovering the recorders could show whether a navigation system issue reported shortly before the crash was linked to a navigation component that relatives say was replaced before the flight.
The authorities have provided no public update on the search for a week, and an industrial company with underwater search expertise told Reuters it had not heard of any requests by them for assistance from foreign companies or navies.
“The search has to continue, and whatever resources can be deployed, locally and internationally, should be deployed,” Yashib Rizwan, the eldest son of Captain Rizwan Idris, told Reuters. “For us, a transparent investigation is key”.
Engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui’s son, Abdur Rafay Siddiqui, also called for international assistance if needed.
Both families have held funeral prayers after losing hope that the bodies would be recovered.
The government has not responded to questions about whether it will seek foreign assistance to search for the plane.
K2, which lost its only plane in the crash, has not responded to requests for comment.
One of the plane’s two inertial reference units (IRUs), which feed information on the aircraft’s position, speed and orientation to the cockpit displays, was replaced in Sharjah, the captain’s son Yashib Rizwan said.
“If you have a problem with your IRU, you just can’t rely upon the instruments,” said John Goglia, a former US National Transportation Safety Board member, adding that pilots flying at night over the ocean without visual references could struggle to determine the aircraft’s orientation.
Aircraft accidents are usually caused by multiple factors, and it remains unclear whether the replacement of the IRU is related to the crash.
An inertial reference system malfunction contributed to the 2007 Adam Air crash in Indonesia, where investigators found the pilots became fixated on troubleshooting erroneous information, failed to notice a steep right bank and lost control before the aircraft plunged into the sea, killing all 102 people aboard.
Pings from the Adam Air black boxes were detected about three weeks after the crash in a search aided by the US Navy, but recovering the recorders from about 2,000 m of water took a months-long multimillion-dollar effort using a specialised remotely operated vehicle.
US aviation expert Todd Curtis said on the “Flight Safety Detectives” podcast that Pakistan was unlikely to mount a similar recovery operation unless there was a compelling reason, given the K2 plane was an ageing cargo jet rather than a current-production passenger model. (With input from Reuters)
