Families of K2 Airways crash victims urge global help to find flight recorders, seeking answers about the tragedy's cause.
Families of five crew members killed in the K2 Airways Boeing 737 cargo crash off Pakistan are urging an international search for the flight recorders to determine the cause, reported Reuters.
Debris from the freighter was recovered after the July 7 crash in the Arabian Sea, but the wreck lies in waters about 3,000 meters deep. Aviation experts said recovering the black boxes would require costly foreign assistance similar to the Air France 447 search in 2009. Locator beacons transmit for only 30 days.
Relatives said a navigation system issue was reported minutes before the crash, and one inertial reference unit had been replaced in Sharjah with a part flown in from the US. They believe the recorders could show whether the fault was linked. Pakistan has given no public update for a week, and no foreign help has been requested.
Yashib Rizwan, son of Captain Rizwan Idris, said a transparent investigation was essential. Engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui's son also called for international assistance. Both families have held funeral prayers, accepting that bodies will not be recovered.
The airports authority said the pilots reported navigation problems at 9:18 PM before radar showed the plane descending rapidly. Flightradar24 data indicated the jet plunged 5,000 feet in under a minute, climbed 6,000 feet in 30 seconds, then entered a fatal dive from 36,550 feet.
Experts noted that inertial reference malfunctions have contributed to past crashes, including Adam Air in 2007. US analyst Todd Curtis said Pakistan was unlikely to mount a multimillion-dollar recovery for an aging cargo jet. K2 Airways, which lost its only plane, has not commented.
