the essential
Two days after the accident, the black boxes from the cargo plane were recovered. Their analysis will shed light on this crash which cost the life of one of the four occupants of the aircraft. Here's what we know.
This Monday, November 25, 2024, a cargo plane crashed in the Lithuanian capital around 5:28 a.m. local time.
Who was on board flight QY5960?
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The Boeing 737 intended for cargo transport belonged to the Spanish airline SwiftAir and was chartered by the company DHL. He had taken off 1h30 earlier from Leipzig airport in Germany with 2 pilots and 2 passengers.
The last minutes
During the final approach, air traffic control authorized the crew to land on runway 19. They gave them permission to descend to 800 meters. Preliminary data suggests the plane lined up on the runway centerline about 10 kilometers from the airport. And just over 7 kilometers from the runway, the pilots were instructed to contact controllers at Vilnius Airport. The pilots confirmed, then radio silence.
A minute later, the plane crashed in a residential area of Vilnius. The impact zone is located 1.5 kilometers from runway 19 of the airport where the plane was to land. According to initial information, and in particular videos, the plane veered to the right just before impact, then exploded when hitting the ground.
Flightradar24/DDM
No emergency calls
Radio exchanges between the plane's pilots and air traffic controllers show that no emergency call was made by the crew before the crash.
The tracks
Following the crash, Russia was quickly singled out. Darius Jauniskis, the head of Lithuanian intelligence services, declared “we cannot exclude the possibility of a terrorist act” and added “we see an increasingly aggressive Russia.” The German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, indicated that we had to “seriously ask ourselves whether this is an accident or, […] of a new hybrid incident.” If the possibility of a terrorist act sponsored by Russia has been mentioned, there is no material evidence to support this hypothesis at this stage.
Another runway, of a technical nature this time, is being studied closely by the investigators… To land, the pilots have in fact decided to use the instrument landing assistance system (ILS) which the airport is provided. Disturbing coincidence, according to the specialist site flightradar24, calibration tests on this system were carried out a few hours before the crash by air navigation services. Could poor calibration have played a role in the crash? The question deserves to be asked, especially since the cloud ceiling was relatively low at the time of the events, between 150 and 200 meters. The crew could have realized, just a few seconds before impact, that the aircraft was descending too quickly and was not in the right place.
Lithuanian Ministry of Justice
Is it a terrorist act, a pilot error, a technical problem? It's still too early to tell. An investigation has been opened. Analysis of the two black boxes, recovered the day after the crash, should provide answers.
What human toll?
One of the two pilots, a Spanish national, was killed in the accident. The other three people on board were taken to hospital and one is in critical condition. No one on the ground was injured.
