After a cargo plane crashed in Vilnius on Monday morning, a conversation between the pilots and flight controllers was published on the internet.
The conversation was routine, with no signs of alarm, but the Boeing 737-476(SF) plane, operated by DHL’s Spanish contractor Swiftair, suddenly dove and crashed in the courtyard of the residential house next to Vilnius Airport. One pilot was killed, and three other crew members were injured.
According to aviation expert Vidas Kaupelis, the pilots did not declare any signs of alarm when talking to the flight controllers.
“Without going into details, it is possible to say that the pilots did not declare any danger, no problems. It was a routine communication, a simple descent,” said Kaupelis, who listened to the recording.
“The fact that the aircraft crashed a few seconds after the end of the communication shows that the pilots themselves were surprised. If they had been dealing with major problems, like a fire or technical problems, they would have communicated about it with the flight controllers,” he added.
According to Kaupelis, such conversations between pilots and flight controllers are usually available on liveatc.net and are not confidential.
The aviation expert said that the crash could have been caused by technical problems, and the possibility of a terrorist act cannot be ruled out. However, an explosion or a fire onboard seems unlikely.
“Pilots would have had an indication if a fire broke out in the aircraft. They probably would have noticed [the fire] and communicated somehow. So far, it doesn’t seem that there was a fire in the cargo hold,” Kaupelis said.
On Monday morning, at around 05:30, the Boeing 737-476(SF) plane, operated by DHL’s Spanish contractor Swiftair and flying from Leipzig in Germany, crashed near Vilnius Airport.
Authorities are investigating all possible versions of the crash, including technical and human error, as well as a terrorist attack.
Earlier this year, two self-igniting mechanisms shipped from Lithuania via DHL caused fires in a logistics centre in Germany’s Leipzig.
DHL said the company has no knowledge of any suspicious cargo on board the plane that crashed in Vilnius on Monday.
“So far, we certainly have no data to confirm anything suspicious that would lead us to suspect that it could have been some kind of incident. While the investigation is underway, we have nothing and we are not commenting on anything yet, we don’t want to speculate,” Aušra Rutkauskienė, sales and marketing director of DHL Lietuva, told BNS.
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