Claim of PK-404 wreckage in satellite images prompts call for search
A researcher says imagery may show the Fokker F27 that left Gilgit in 1989 with 54 people aboard; an aviation expert wants the site checked.
A Pakistani researcher says satellite images may show the wreckage of Pakistan International Airlines flight PK-404, which disappeared after leaving Gilgit in 1989 with 54 people on board, according to two published accounts of his work.
The Fokker F27 left Gilgit for Islamabad on 25 August 1989 carrying 49 passengers and five crew. The pilots made a routine radio call at 7:40 am near Bunji, four to nine minutes after takeoff, and the aircraft was not heard from again. The military searched the Nanga Parbat range by air and on the ground, with assistance from the Indian military, and found nothing, Insider Paper reported.
The accounts differ on who made the claim and where. The Express Tribune named him as Sabih Ali Rajput, a researcher who spent two years working out the aircraft's route and how far its fuel could have carried it before scanning satellite images of remote mountain ranges on Google Earth. It said he places the possible wreckage in a snow-covered area near Tajikistan, perhaps towards the Wakhan Corridor. Insider Paper named him as Faseeh Ali Rajput, 17, and said his search, set out in a video he uploaded to YouTube, narrowed the area around Bunji and Nanga Parbat, where he listed seven sets of coordinates and described what he took to be a debris trail spread in three sections across a moving glacier, with a shape on a rocky bridge that he read as the nose and cockpit.
The Express Tribune reported that Rajput believes the aircraft may have tried to turn back towards Gilgit because of bad weather, and noted that this sits awkwardly with a site so far away. Aviation experts would have to examine that discrepancy before conclusions are drawn, it said.
Imran Aslam Khan, an aviation expert quoted by the Express Tribune, said the findings deserve closer examination with modern technology. If the object in the images is established as aircraft wreckage, the government could consider sending helicopters and mountaineers to the location, he said.
Khan said the Gilgit to Islamabad route crosses some of the country's most difficult mountain terrain, where weather can change with little warning, and that aircraft flying in 1989 did not carry the weather radar available today. Recovery of the wreckage, and of the black box in particular, could show what happened in the aircraft's final minutes and establish the cause of the disappearance, the Express Tribune reported.
Insider Paper reported that the claim drew praise online and calls for an official investigation, including a post on X by Tariq Saeed saying the government should respond.
How the reports differ
The Express Tribune named the researcher Sabih Ali Rajput, said he spent two years on the search, and placed the possible wreckage near Tajikistan, perhaps towards the Wakhan Corridor; it alone quoted aviation expert Imran Aslam Khan. Insider Paper named him Faseeh Ali Rajput, 17, put the area he examined around Bunji and Nanga Parbat, and was alone in carrying the flight's 1989 details, his reading of the glacier debris and the online calls for an official inquiry. The two therefore disagree on the man's name and age and on where the suspected site lies.
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