Cargo flight KTA1732 lost over Gulf of Oman

[Kyle Ferriter]

Flight KTA1732 flown by aircraft with registration AP-BOI has gone missing in the Gulf of Oman after departing Dubai and going east, intending to land in Karachi.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/ap-boi#408bc3bc

FlightRadar24 reports there has been active GPS interference in the area related to the war with Iran, causing difficulty for ADSB aggregators.

...
Preliminary ADS-B data indicate a loss of altitude, followed by a climb, and then a second, sudden and dramatic loss of altitude. The final received data point from the aircraft was at 16:21 UTC, placing the aircraft at 1,100 ft AMSL with a reported vertical rate of -22,400 feet per minute.
...
Shortly after takeoff the aircraft, all others in the region, experienced GNSS interference, resulting in the degraded data near Sharjah and transition to MLAT tracking by Flightradar24. Once the the aircraft exited the area subject to GNSS interference, ADS-B data was once again received by Flightradar24.
...

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/...major-incident/k2-airways-cargo-737-accident/

There have been multiple US-flown aircraft circling above the Gulf of Oman east of Dubai and the Straight of Hormuz, and ADSB Exchange shows very spotty tracks of civilian planes in that area. Looking back the past week, the US has had one or more large planes flying a holding pattern in the same location at least since 7/1 (that's as far as I looked back right now), so their presence today is not out of the ordinary.

FlightRadar24 shows that flight ABY546 which was flying just ahead of KTA1732 on the same route from Sharjah airport (Dubai) to Karachi, did complete its trip.

I'm not sure where FlightRadar24 is getting their data for these flights or if they have tweaks to enable more interpolation, because ADSB Exchange shows massive gaps in the tracks. Unless FR24 has a lot more feeders in that area than ADSBx does, I'm not sure to what extent specific points along this track are reliable, or how much is extrapolation/interpolation over noisy data. It's possible ADSBx is filtering out some low-quality time points that FR24 is not.

ADSBx's track ends at 2026-07-07 15:53:32 UTC, but FR24 continues to 2026-07-07 16:21:59 UTC, at which point it shows a turn, a brief dip, and then a very rapid decline, after which the track ends.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=17113/FR24 KTA1732 20260707/20260707_214113.js

FlightRadar24 KML for this flight is attached as 408bc3bc.kml. ADSB Exchange KMLs attached in zip file.

 

[Harabeck]

According to the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA), the crew reported a navigational system problem to the Karachi Area Control Centre at approximately 9:18 PM Pakistan Standard Time. Air traffic controllers immediately began providing navigational assistance as the aircraft continued toward Karachi. Within about three minutes, radar data showed the Boeing 737 descending rapidly while simultaneously making a significant heading change.

https://simpleflying.com/pakistan-cargo-boeing-737-missing-search-rescue/

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

From a blog post from FlightRadar24 describing how they are now using 3-point MLAT (they previously required 4) to attempt to correct tracks subjected to GPS interference:

By calculating MLAT positions for all flights, Flightradar24 is able to counter the effects of GPS interference in real time and show a more correct path for an aircraft. We recently completed a major update to our MLAT calculations, allowing us to calculate MLAT positions using just three receivers. Previously, four receivers were necessary to calculate positions. This improvement has allowed us to increase the area in which we are able to show MLAT positions, including some of the areas of the world experiencing the greatest amount of GPS jamming and spoofing.

Because of how MLAT positions are calculated, they are not as precise as GPS derived positions. However, as a counter to wild deviations caused by GPS spoofing or jamming, they have become an extremely useful tool for showing accurate flight paths. In May 2025, 7% of flights that are normally tracked via ADS-B were tracked with MLAT due to GPS interference.

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/...ightradar24-uses-mlat-to-counter-gps-jamming/

This may be how they are able to show a more complete than ADSB Exchange does.

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

FlightAware KML attached. (source: https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/APBOI/history/20260707/1512Z)

This track ends at 2026-07-07 16:19:51 UTC, which is around the peak of the bump before the rapid descent.

FlightRadar24 has a point in their KML at 16:19:52 UTC. Below is the FlightRadar24 track in Google Earth, with a yellow arrow pointing to 16:19:52 UTC.

 

[Mendel]

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/...major-incident/k2-airways-cargo-737-accident/ has the altitude/speed diagram, which certainly suggests that the aircraft was fine until it was not.

The speed first spikes as the aircraft descends (same mechanic as on a slide), the pilots then take the aircraft up to altitude but at the cost of speed (same mechanic as on a swing set), but then they seem to lose lift and go down.
This means that either the aircraft suffered an upset and then stalled as the speed got too low, or something structural broke (not just an engine, this is not an engine-out glide).
Or we have a rare suicidal pilot again.

As usual when the aircraft is at the bottom of the ocean, facts are going to be hard to come by. "They collided with a flying saucer" is going to be hard to debunk for a while, US military radar assets notwithstanding ("the government is covering it up"). Maybe they were on a plan where the aircraft regularly sends maintenance data via satellite; then we'd have a source of potentially helpful information. But it's probably going to be a bit of a mystery for a while.

 

[JMartJr]

Anybody want to interpret what might be going on here? It may be unrelated, but it looks odd and on the off chance somebody wants to ask ME, of all people, what I think happened I'd like to be able to sound informed, if I can't manage sounding smart.

My imagination goes to "hesitation marks" and the suicidal pilot theory, but that may be getting too speculative? I guess a struggle for control of the cockpit might also potentially create some weirdness in the flying -- in either case, the

A person attempting or contemplating suicide with a sharp knife or implement may make repetitive marks on an area of accessible skin.
Theories for hesitation marks:
(1) The person's resolve fails ("hesitates") while making a cut.
(2) The person is trying to decide how much a cut will hurt.
(3) The person is acting out and is not serious about committing suicide.

https://www.medicalalgorithms.com/features-of-hesitation-marks-in-suicide

(Often called "hesitation wounds -- JM)

Do the swings in speed without a change in altitude there suggest anything, or is that pretty normal?

 

[Mendel]

My imagination goes to "hesitation marks" and the suicidal pilot theory, but that may be getting too speculative? I

GPS spoofing would mess up the ground speed as the position "jumps".
Note that an aircraft cannot quickly change speed without trading altitude for it, and the altitude is steady during that ground speed squiggle. There's no braking in air.

At the end, you can see altitude move down as speed goes up and vice versa; physics would say the aircraft is trading potential energy for kinetic energy. That's how it would look earlier if the ground speed fluctuations were real.

Altitude is barometric, and air pressure can't be spoofed.

 

[FatPhil]

GPS spoofing would mess up the ground speed as the position "jumps".

It shouldn't do, if there's appropriate redundancy - the plane should have an inertial navigational subsystem which can dead-reckon velocity and thence position from accelerometers (or equivalent). Any massive deviation of one source of position data (GPS) from another (INS) should cause the navigational system to evaluate the reliability of the data, which is necessary for fault tolerance. Wild GPS changes would correspond to both impossible velocities and impossible accellerations, and should be given lower credence, flagging the GPS as having a possible fault (unless the accelerometers are going wild in agreement). Yes, INS can drift, which means under loss and then regain of GPS you can suddenly need to make a massive correction, but that is a known problem, and estimation algorithms such as Kalman Filtering are used to mitigate the problems (effectively, your trust in dead reckoning values decreases over time too, so you aren't that surprised when you're corrected).

 

[Mauro]

This means that either the aircraft suffered an upset and then stalled as the speed got too low, or something structural broke (not just an engine, this is not an engine-out glide).
Or we have a rare suicidal pilot again.

It's an active war zone, I would not discount at the moment the possibility of a war-related accidenmt.

 

[Mendel]

It shouldn't do, if there's appropriate redundancy

The pilots are using air speed, the flight tracker is using ground speed there.
The aircraft also has an inertial navigation system that should work independently of GPS. This can drift over time (but not jump), and it may not be accessible to the ADS-B transmitter.

It's an active war zone, I would not discount at the moment the possibility of a war-related accidenmt.

The aircraft was off the coast of Pakistan, 300 km east of Iran.

 

[FatPhil]

The pilots are using air speed, the flight tracker is using ground speed there.
The aircraft also has an inertial navigation system that should work independently of GPS. This can drift over time (but not jump), and it may not be accessible to the ADS-B transmitter.

I suspect everything's on a single CAN bus. I remember a security issue a while back where it was discovered that the in-flight entertainment system was bridged onto the same bus as the flying stuff, and if they're that stupid they'll definitely not be isolating two navigational components from each other.

Not sure if this is the case I'm thinking of, but at 2015, it's about the right timeframe:

Hacker told F.B.I. he made plane fly sideways after cracking entertainment system

https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-ne...e-fly-sideways-cracking-entertainment-system/

(Side note: lest the car-owners hereon get cocky, have an automobile equivalent of this kind of misdesign: https://vicone.com/blog/how-to-get-away-with-car-theft-unveiling-the-dark-side-of-the-can-bus/ )

 

[Mendel]

they'll definitely not be isolating two navigational components from each other.

a) the aircraft was built in 1999, with ADS-B retrofitted;
b) ADS-B is not a "navigational component".

 

[FatPhil]

a) the aircraft was built in 1999, with ADS-B retrofitted;
b) ADS-B is not a "navigational component".

a) Yeah, busses work that way, new things can be added to them - hence the car hack.

b) I didn't say "navigational input", or "useful to the pilot to help him navigate". It's an transmitter of the navigational data, so it's part of the navigational system. (As is the in-flight entertainment system, as it needs to plot the plane on the map, hence the security issue, because some plonkers were too lazy to impliment rendezvous.)

 

[Mendel]

I suspect everything's on a single CAN bus. I remember a security issue a while back where it was discovered that the in-flight entertainment system was bridged onto the same bus as the flying stuff, and if they're that stupid they'll definitely not be isolating two navigational components from each other.

Not sure if this is the case I'm thinking of, but at 2015, it's about the right timeframe:
https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-ne...e-fly-sideways-cracking-entertainment-system/

bunk

a comment on the article says

The IFE and FMS are not connected on the 737, a320 or 757, they are too old. IFE was added after the airframes were certified. There is no reason to hook the flight management system of these aircraft to any IP network. The engine management system talks to the ground over other radios (inmarsat arinc etc). IFE talks to the ground using GOGO Row44 or something else.

 

[FatPhil]

bunk

a comment on the article says

The IFE and FMS are not connected on the 737, a320 or 757, they are too old. IFE was added after the airframes were certified. There is no reason to hook the flight management system of these aircraft to any IP network. The engine management system talks to the ground over other radios (inmarsat arinc etc). IFE talks to the ground using GOGO Row44 or something else.

How does the IFE plot the plane's position on the map if they're "not connected"?

I agree that the in-flight hack Roberts claimed he was doing at the time is almost certainly bunk, largely because when he later denied it under questioning, noone had any evidence that he'd actually done anything. He had inside knowledge of the design, and had tested his ideas out on a simulated environment, so I suspect he felt that the real thing was insufficiently secure, and so just wanted to create a fuss by exagerating the risks so much that they veered into fiction. The aircraft manufacturers mostly stayed completely quiet, which is never comforting to those familiar with Kerckhoffs's principle (security must reside in the key, not in secret knowledge about the system - or if someone who knows how it works can break it, it's broken). Heck, even Bruce Schneier (on whose blog I probably encountered the story) was dissatisfied with their response:

The real issue is that the avionics and the entertainment system are on the same network.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/05/more_on_chris_r.html