A photo of a K2 Airways plane. — K2 AIRWAYS WEBSITE
KARACHI:
Pakistani authorities are considering hiring foreign deep-sea salvage specialists to assist in the recovery of the missing K2 Airways cargo plane that crashed in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Ormara, as efforts continue to locate the plane’s crew, fuselage, engines and black box.
According to sources, the Aviation Safety Investigation Bureau, which is leading the investigation into the accident, has proposed to the government that salvage companies with international experience be hired for the technically complex deep-water recovery operation.
Following government deliberations, cooperation with specialized international salvage organizations is expected to pave the way for an advanced underwater recovery effort.
The search operation continued on Sunday, with Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Maritime Safety Agency maintaining coordinated operations in the accident area off the coast of Balochistan near Ormara.
Sources said it was decided to continue the search operation on a sustained basis using naval resources deployed in the area.
So far, search teams have recovered the tail section of the plane and a bag belonging to engineer Hamid, while efforts continue to locate the crew, fuselage, engines and flight black box.
Family members are urging an international search effort to find the flight recorders and determine the cause.
Affected families have also received an official response through the Prime Minister’s Portal after submitting an application. Under the portal mechanism, a representative of a human rights organization has been appointed in Karachi to coordinate and assist the affected families.
The families had also filed a petition regarding the accident through the Pakistan Senate portal.
The wreckage of the K2 Airways freighter was recovered shortly after the July 7 accident, but the water in the area is about 3,000 meters deep.
Finding the “black boxes” would require a costly underwater search that would likely require foreign help, according to aviation experts familiar with deep-water accidents like the Air France 447 crash in 2009.
The 27-year-old plane’s locator beacons were designed to transmit pings for only 30 days. Recovery of the recorders could show whether a navigation system problem reported shortly before the crash was related to a navigation component that relatives say was replaced before the flight.
Authorities have not provided any public update on the search for a week, and an industrial company with experience in underwater searches told Reuters it had not heard of any requests for help from foreign companies or navies.
“The search has to continue, and all resources that can be deployed, locally and internationally, must 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 help 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 help to search for the plane.
K2, which lost its only plane in the crash, did not respond to requests for comment.
One of the plane’s two inertial reference units (IRUs), which feed information about the plane’s position, speed and orientation to cockpit displays, was replaced in Sharjah, said the captain’s son, Yashib Rizwan.
“If you have a problem with your IRU, you simply can’t trust the instruments,” said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, adding that pilots flying at night over the ocean without visual references could have difficulty determining the aircraft’s orientation.
Airplane accidents are usually caused by multiple factors and it is still unclear whether the replacement of the IRU is related to the accident.
An inertial reference system malfunction contributed to the 2007 Adam Air crash in Indonesia, where investigators found that the pilots focused on troubleshooting with erroneous information, failed to notice a steep right bank, and lost control before the plane plunged into the sea, killing all 102 people on board.
Pings from Adam Air’s black boxes were detected about three weeks after the crash in a search aided by the US Navy, but recovering the recorders from about 2,000m of water required a multi-million dollar effort lasting months using a specialized remotely operated vehicle.
American 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 that the K2 plane was an aging cargo plane and not a current production passenger model. (With contributions from Reuters)
