Lithuanian investigators have so far found no evidence that the crash of a cargo plane from Germany in Vilnius could have been deliberately caused.
“Based on what we have and what we know now, there is no indication that it could have been an act of sabotage,” Defense Minister Laurynas Kasciunas told journalists at parliament in Vilnius on Wednesday, Lithuanian Radio reported. “Nothing can be ruled out, but at the moment I have no arguments to the contrary.”
The cargo plane crashed in a residential area early Monday morning, shortly before its scheduled landing near Vilnius airport. One of the four crew members died.
Lithuanian authorities have launched an investigation into the crash and recovered the flight data recorder from the completely destroyed plane on Tuesday.
The two black boxes record flight data and conversations in the cockpit respectively.
Investigators hope evaluation of the plane’s flight recorders will provide important insights into the cause of the crash.
According to the authorities in Vilnius, they must be evaluated in Germany.
The reason for this is that there is no research facility in the Baltic state that can analyze the flight data recorder and voice recorder of the Swift Air plane, which was en route from the East German city of Leipzig to Vilnius on behalf of German logistics. giant DHL when it crashed.
Earlier, the head of the National Crisis Management Center, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, told Lithuanian radio that the analysis would likely be carried out by “one of our European allies.”
The head of the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice for Road Accident Investigation, Laurynas Naujokaitis, then named Germany as a country to conduct the analysis.
“We plan to send them to Germany, but we are still waiting for a response from the investigating authorities as they are sending officials to accompany the black boxes,” he told the BNS agency.
Naujokaitis noted that it should not be difficult for specialists to extract all the data from the flight recorders, as they did not suffer major damage.
The first data could be available as early as the end of this week, he said, while emphasizing that it would not be made public.
Defense Minister Kasciunas said initial analyzes and interviews with surviving crew members showed there were no external influences on the landing plane.