Europe
Lithuania says it sees no sign of sabotage in the crash of a DHL cargo plane
Associated Press
December 20, 2024
Lithuanian Emergency Ministry employees and police officers survey the site where a DHL cargo plane crashed into a house near Vilnius on Nov. 25, 2024. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)
VILNIUS, Lithuania — An investigation of last month’s crash of a DHL cargo plane as it approached the airport in Vilnius has found no indication of “unauthorized interference,” the Lithuanian government said Friday.
The plane crashed and skidded into a house in the early morning of Nov. 25. A Spanish crew member was killed and the other three crew members were injured, but no one was hurt on the ground.
Officials acknowledged at the time that one line of inquiry would be whether Russia played a role given its suspected involvement in cases of sabotage, though they stressed there was no evidence pointing in that direction.
The Lithuanian Justice Ministry said in a statement Friday that after a preliminary analysis of the Boeing 737’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, as well as an examination of evidence from the accident scene, “no signs of unauthorized interference were found.”
The DHL aircraft was operated by Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor. The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe, though that’s not unusual for cargo flights.