Families of K2 airways crash victims appeal for international search
Relatives of the five crew members
aboard a K2 Airways Boeing 737 cargo
aircraft that crashed into the Arabian Sea off Pakistan last week are urging
authorities to launch an international search operation to recover the flight
recorders, saying the "black boxes" are essential to determining the
cause of the disaster.
While debris from the aircraft was
recovered shortly after the July 7 crash, the wreckage is believed to rest
nearly 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) below the surface, making recovery of the
flight data and cockpit voice recorders a complex and costly deep-sea
operation.
Aviation experts familiar with major
underwater crash investigations, including the 2009 Air France Flight 447
accident, said locating and recovering the black boxes would likely require
specialised equipment and foreign assistance.
Among those calling for
international support is Abdur Rafay Siddiqui, son of flight engineer Muhammad
Arif Siddiqui, who urged Pakistan to seek help from overseas if necessary to
uncover the cause of the crash.
The families of the victims have
already held funeral prayers after abandoning hope that the bodies of the crew
members would be recovered.
Read More Search
for crashed Pakistani cargo aircraft continues as more wreckage found
Pakistan's government has not
commented on whether it plans to seek international assistance for a deep-water
recovery mission. K2 Airways, which lost its only aircraft in the accident, has
also not responded to requests for comment.
According to Pakistan's airports
authority, the crew reported a navigational system malfunction at 9:18 p.m.
local time while operating a cargo flight from Sharjah, United Arab Emirates,
to Karachi.
Air traffic controllers attempted to
guide the aircraft after receiving the report. However, radar data showed the
plane entering a rapid descent just three minutes later before communication
was lost.
Flight tracking data from
Flightradar24 indicated the aircraft descended approximately 5,000 feet in less
than a minute, briefly climbed around 6,000 feet within 30 seconds, and then
entered a catastrophic dive from an altitude of 36,550 feet.
Family members said the aircraft had
remained in Sharjah for about 10 days before departure while the crew waited
for a replacement component to arrive from the United States following a
maintenance issue.
Ghulam Nabi, the father-in-law of
co-pilot Faisal Jatoi, said the delay was caused by the need to replace a
faulty part. The captain's son, Yashib Rizwan, said one of the aircraft's two
inertial reference units (IRUs)—which provide critical information on the
aircraft's position, speed and orientation to cockpit systems—was replaced
during the maintenance work.
Investigators have not established
any link between the replacement of the IRU and the crash. Aviation experts
caution that aircraft accidents are typically the result of multiple
contributing factors, and the cause of the accident remains under
investigation.
A malfunction involving an inertial
reference system played a role in the 2007 Adam Air crash in Indonesia.
Investigators concluded that the pilots became preoccupied with troubleshooting
faulty navigation data, failed to recognize the aircraft's steep bank, and
ultimately lost control before it crashed into the sea, killing all 102 people
on board.
Read More K2
Airways will be the first airline of Pakistan to introduce Brazilian Embraer
E-Jets
Recovery of the Adam Air flight
recorders required an extensive international effort. Their locator beacons
were detected about three weeks after the accident in a search supported by the
U.S. Navy, while retrieving the recorders from a depth of roughly 2,000 metres
took several months and required a specialised remotely operated underwater
vehicle.
U.S. aviation safety expert Todd
Curtis said on the Flight Safety Detectives podcast that Pakistan may be
reluctant to undertake a similarly expensive recovery mission unless
investigators identify a compelling reason, noting that the aircraft involved
was an ageing cargo jet rather than a modern passenger airliner.
Source: www.fbcnews.com.fj