by Andrius Sytas
VILNIUS (Reuters) – A DHL cargo plane crashed on landing at Vilnius airport in Lithuania on Monday morning, killing one crew member.
The other three people on board were injured but there were no casualties on the ground, authorities said.
The flight, operated by the airline Swiftair on behalf of DHL, originated from Leipzig, Germany.
The cause of the accident remains unknown and according to the authorities, there is so far no indication that it was a case of sabotage. Germany is investigating several fires caused by explosive objects hidden in packages at a Leipzig warehouse for delivery by DHL earlier this year.
“We cannot dismiss the possibility of a terrorist act… but at the moment we cannot make attributions or point fingers because we do not have such information,” the chief said of Lithuanian counter-espionage, Darius Jauniskis, to journalists.
The plane, a Boeing 737-400, crashed around 0330 GMT during its descent to Vilnius airport, a spokesperson for Lithuania's National Crisis Management Center said.
In security camera footage, a plane can be seen descending behind a warehouse and then the night sky lighting up in red and orange colors, before a thick plume of black smoke appeared.
Emergency services said the plane hit the ground, broke into several pieces and slid more than 100 meters. Some debris crashed into a home.
“In the recording of the conversation between the pilots and the tower, the pilots, until the last second, did not inform the tower of any incident,” said Marius Baranauskas, director of the national authority of the Lithuanian Air Force.
“We need to examine the black boxes to find out what happened on the plane,” he added.
DHL has launched its own investigation into the crash, a spokesperson for the company's Lithuanian branch told Reuters.
“The plane was carrying ordinary packages. We have no information indicating that any of them were suspicious,” the company added.
(Reporting Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, Friederike Heine in Berlin, Tim Hepher in Paris, Landauro Inti in Madrid, Sabine Siebold in Brussels, Jiawei Wang in Beijing, Rishabh Jaiswal in Bangalore, written by Anna Ringstrom; French version Pauline Foret, edited by Blandine Hénault)
