Funeral prayers have been held for flight engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui, one of the five missing crew members of the cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea last week.
A large crowd gathered near Mr Siddiqui's home in Karachi, Pakistan, on Sunday to offer prayers in his absence as the search for him and his four fellow crew members entered a sixth day.
The K2 Airways Cargo 737 plane, which was en route to Karachi from Sharjah, disappeared from radar off the coast of Pakistan on Tuesday night after a navigation system problem.
Search-and-rescue teams recovered pieces of wreckage almost 100 kilometres south of the Pakistani port of Ormara on Wednesday, with more discovered on Friday, although the main fuselage is still missing.
In a statement on X, the Pakistan Airports Authority confirmed a deep-sea search is being carried out by the Pakistan Navy and Maritime Security Agency.
“The search for the crew members is continuing with full vigour through the co-ordinated employment of aerial and sea-borne assets,” it said.
“Additional parts and debris from the ill-fated aircraft have been located and retrieved for subsequent analysis by the investigation team. Further updates will be shared as the search and rescue operation continues.”
The airline released the names of the five crew members who were on board the flight: pilot Mohammad Rizwan Idrees, first officer Faisal Mehmood, loadmaster Muhammad Toufique Khan, and engineers Mr Siddiqui and Mohammad Hamid.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif extended his condolences to the families of the crew, expressing “profound grief and sorrow over the tragic incident”.
The recovered debris will be analysed by investigators to discover the cause of the accident.
Flight data showed the plane experienced a loss of altitude and a rapid descent, followed by another climb and then a second sudden loss of altitude.
K2 Airways, which has its headquarters in Karachi, is a private cargo airline established in 2018 under an airline charter licence issued by the Pakistani government.
The Boeing 737 began service with K2 Airways in 2024 and was previously operated by the Russian airline Aeroflot in 1999 and by Garuda Indonesia in 2004.
In 2012, it was converted into a cargo plane and operated by TNT Airways and ASL Airlines, before being transferred to a Pakistani operator to move cargo around the Arabian Gulf and the wider region.
