The black boxes from the DHL cargo plane that crashed in Vilnius on Monday have been found, the Justice Ministry said on Tuesday.
They were found at around 11:30 and removed from the plane’s wreckage.
The inspection of the plane will be completed within three days and the aircraft will later be removed from the site, the authorities said earlier on Tuesday.
“We continue to plan our pre-trial investigation. I think the site inspection can be completed within the next two to three days,” Police Commissioner General Arūnas Paulauskas told a press conference in Vilnius on Tuesday.
“Then, a new stage will follow – the removal of the aircraft’s remains from the site. We are currently actively looking for a hangar where we can place these parts,” he added.
A Spanish national, 48, was killed and three other crew members, a Spanish, a German, and a Lithuanian national, were injured when the DHL cargo plane crashed near Vilnius Airport on Monday morning. One of the injured men is in critical condition.
At least 19 witnesses were interviewed in connection with the accident on Monday, according to Artūras Urbelis, chief prosecutor from the Organised Crime and Corruption Investigation Department at the Prosecutor General’s Office.
For his part, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the National Crisis Management Center, said the crash investigation was entering the next stage.
“The key message today is that we are entering the next phase where we are moving from the recovery and the accident site inspection [...] to a calm and consistent investigation of the information, the collection of data and comparing that with data we have gathered from the scene and the aircraft,” he said.
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