Air disaster in Lithuania: at least one person dead and three injured near Vilnius

At least one person was killed and three others injured after a cargo plane crashed near Vilnius airport in Lithuania on Monday morning.

Local authorities said a Boeing 737 operated for DHL by Spanish freight airline Swiftair crashed near a house during final approach to landing.

Police reported that 12 people were safely evacuated from the facility.

The cause of the crash is still unclear, but the defense minister said there were no initial indications it was sabotage or terrorism.

According to Flightradar24, the plane took off from the DHL hub at Leipzig Airport in Germany just after 03:00 local time (02:00 GMT) and crashed about an hour and a half later. DHL said the plane made an “emergency landing.”

Photos from the scene show pieces of blackened wreckage scattered among trees.

“The plane landed, but it fell a few kilometers before the airport, skidded for several hundred meters, and its wreckage hit a residential building,” said Renatas Pozela, a leading police officer.

He added that one person from the four-person crew died.

It was not immediately clear how many people were on board the plane in total.

Pozela said a nearby house suffered “light damage” and nearby infrastructure caught fire, but all residents were safely evacuated.

Both Lithuanian authorities and DHL have launched separate investigations into what happened.

Police chief Arunas Paulauskas told a news conference that the cause of the crash was “most likely a technical accident or it could have been human error,” but all possible causes would be investigated.

“In the recording of the pilots’ conversation with the (air traffic control) tower, the pilots did not inform the tower about any extraordinary event until the last second,” said Marius Baranauskas, head of the Lithuanian National Aviation Authority. – quoted by Reuters.

Authorities said they had no data at this time to indicate there was an explosion before the crash.

An airport spokesman said it was a Boeing 737-400.

According to the Associated Press, the temperature before the disaster was 0°C, there were clouds before sunrise, and the wind reached a speed of about 30 km/h.

The AP added that the plane was 31 years old.