Researcher claims to find wreckage of PIA plane missing since 1989

A Pakistani researcher says he has identified what may be the wreckage of Pakistan International Airlines flight PK-404, the Fokker that disappeared on a flight from Gilgit 37 years ago with 54 people on board.

Sabih Ali Rajput told Express News that the possible wreckage lies on a remote, snow-covered mountain peak near Wakhan, in Tajikistan. He said he spent two years on the search, working with Google Earth and satellite images. UrduPoint also carried his claim.

Flight PK-404 went missing in 1989 on its way from Gilgit to Islamabad. No trace of the aircraft has been found since.

Rajput said he started from the aircraft's route, its expected flying time, its fuel load and other available data, then worked through mountain terrain on Google Earth. The peak he identified, he said, is far from any population.

He said the aircraft may have turned back towards Gilgit because of bad weather. How it could then have reached the Wakhan area, so far off that route, is a question he said only aviation experts can answer.

If the identification holds, he said, the families of the 54 people on board could at last learn what happened to them.

Imran Aslam Khan, an aviation expert quoted by Express News, said the finding has to be checked with modern technology before it is treated as wreckage. If satellite images confirm it, he said, the government could send helicopters and mountaineers to the site. Wreckage and a black box, he said, could establish the causes of the 1989 crash.

Khan said the Gilgit to Islamabad route crosses some of the most difficult mountain ranges in the country, where weather turns within minutes and conditions at 30,000 to 50,000 feet can be dangerous for aircraft. Aircraft in 1989 did not carry weather radar of the kind in use today, he said.

Neither PIA nor any government department is quoted in either report, and nobody has visited the site.