The last decades have been relatively quiet in Lithuania’s aviation sector. The 20th century, however, was marked by far more fatal crashes. The largest Lithuania-related disaster occurred in 1973 when a passenger plane flying from Vilnius crashed near Moscow, killing 51 people, says Lithuanian Aviation Museum curator Eugenijus Raubickas.
The Lithuanian Civil Aviation Authority’s Tu-124, which carried 45 passengers and six crew members, was nicknamed the “doctors’ plane” because it was carrying four famous Lithuanian paediatricians of the time – Petras Baublys, Liudmila Steponaitienė, Raimondas Lučinskas, and Ona Surplienė.
On December 16, 1973, an Aeroflot flight was scheduled to fly from Vilnius to Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow but did not reach its destination. At 19:10, it crashed in the Volokolamsk region.
According to the Balsas.lt article, published in 2010, most of the passengers on the Tu-124 that crashed in December 1973 were Lithuanians, mostly from Vilnius and Kaunas.
“The commission that investigated the causes of the accident found that the elevator of the Tu-124 was fitted with a special trimmer, which is operated mechanically or by an electric motor. On that fateful December evening, the motor kicked in, disabling the trimmer, causing the plane to wobble and eventually crash,” the article said.
The four Lithuanian paediatricians who were on the plane were trying to reach a conference in Kharkiv. As Česlava Kleizienė, a colleague of Baublys, told the magazine Ekstra in 2002, the plane to Ukraine was cancelled due to bad weather conditions but the doctors decided to fly anyway – via Moscow.
“They thought they could reach Kharkiv faster, so they flew. Only the doctor from Kaunas, Professor Ona Skučaitė-Grinkevičienė, who was then head of the Department of Children’s Diseases at the Kaunas Medical Institute, was not among them,” said Kleizienė
According to Skučaitė-Grinkevičienė herself, she thought a thousand times about why she did not fly with her colleagues.
“It was an absolute coincidence. I asked my son to buy me a ticket to Kharkiv. He did, but not a plane ticket, a train ticket. I remember being in a carriage with gypsies and being angry with my son for having done this to me,” the doctor recalled.
“I find myself in Kharkiv at night, I go to the conference in the morning, and I see that none of my friends are there. And in the afternoon, my colleagues started to look at me more and more intently. Finally, one professor came up and said that our plane hadn’t left – she didn’t want to tell the truth. And in the evening, I found out that everybody had died. I couldn’t understand this,” she said.
Tragic wedding
As pointed out by Lithuanian Aviation Museum curator Raubickas, the year 1998 also went down in the history of Lithuanian aviation disasters. On August 30 that year, at 15:20, a Mi-2 helicopter crashed into the surface of Plateliai Lake, killing 11 people.
In 2003, the newspaper Akistata described this tragedy as the biggest helicopter crash in Lithuania.
“On the penultimate day of the summer of 1998, the Mažeikiai businessman celebrated his wedding. His friends provided a helicopter for the wedding banquet, which was used to fly the wedding guests. Four flights over the beautiful Plateliai Lake were successful. The last one, the fifth, ended in a terrible tragedy – the helicopter crashed into the lake, killing 11 people, including the pilot,” the publication said.
According to the publication, the helicopter was piloted by Nikolai Kiushkin, a 49-year-old Russian from Riga.
“He behaved too daringly, even hooligan-like in the air. He flew the wedding guests at a dangerously low altitude, manoeuvred abruptly, frightened several car drivers, villagers, and sailors on the Plateliai Lake by flying close to the ground at high speed,” Akistata reported.
21st-century disasters
Data on aviation accidents in Lithuania in the 21st century is much better organised and managed by the Justice Ministry. According to Paulius Žeimys, Public Relations Advisor to Justice Minister Ewelina Dobrowolska, the crash of a Swiftair cargo plane in Vilnius on November 25, which killed one person and injured three others, is exceptional.
“It could not be compared to other aircraft accidents that have occurred in Lithuania before. According to the Transport Accident and Incident Investigation Division of the Justice Ministry, the current safety investigation is the largest safety investigation into an aircraft accident in Lithuania,” he said.
“To date, accidents involving smaller aircraft, such as light and ultralight aircraft, helicopters, hot air balloons, paragliders, and gliders have been recorded and investigated in Lithuania,” Žeimys added.
According to the ministry’s data, six safety investigations into aircraft accidents were launched in Lithuania this year alone. Three of the crashed aircraft were gliders, as well as one hot air balloon, one ultralight aircraft, and one light aircraft.
“In previous years, the number of fatalities in aircraft accidents ranged from zero to five per year. According to the data on safety investigation reports available only to the Justice Ministry, which have been collected since 2000, the highest number of fatalities in an aircraft accident in Lithuania is two,” Žeimys said.
Fatal crashes
On June 2, 2007, a TL 2000 twin-seat ultralight aircraft crashed in Lithuania. According to the accident investigation report, the aircraft was on a training flight at Klaipėda Aerodrome in gusty winds when it entered a spin during the first turn and collided with the ground at a high angle.
“Two people on board were killed in the accident and the aircraft was completely burnt down in the resulting fire,” the document says.
Another accident, which occurred in 2009 in Klaipėda, also claimed two lives.
“In the afternoon of August 8, an experimental homemade twin-seat plane, which belonged to a private person and was piloted by a pilot of the Klaipėda Gliding Club, collided with the wires of a power transmission line at low altitude while flying over the Šiauliai-Palanga road and crashed next to the road, 4 kilometres away from the aerodrome,” reads the report of this incident.
The owner of the plane claimed that the pilot flew from Kartena Aerodrome without his knowledge. The pilot was killed in the accident and a passenger died in hospital as a result of his injuries.
In 2014, a VL-3 Evolution ultralight aircraft crashed in Trakai.
“On April 19, at 20:00, the aircraft piloted by a Lithuanian citizen took off for a reconnaissance flight from the Paluknis Aerodrome. Shortly after take-off, the ultralight aircraft went into a flat spin and crashed in the Madžiūnai Forest, Trakai District,” the accident investigation report reads.
The pilot and a passenger were killed instantly.
Crashing into sea
The year 2015 is significant in the history of Lithuanian aviation disasters because of the accident in the Baltic Sea. On May 16 that year, an An-2 aircraft crashed while flying from Sweden to Lithuania, killing both crew members.
“The An-2 took off from Stauning Aerodrome in Skjern, Denmark at around 7:00 and landed at Kattleberg Aerodrome near Gothenburg at around 9:00. At 11:07, the An-2 aircraft took off from Kattleberg Aerodrome for a flight to Klaipėda Aerodrome in Lithuania,” the incident report states.
At 13:21, the crew of the aircraft communicated by radio with the Palanga Air Traffic Control Centre and reported their flight altitude, transponder code, and estimated time of arrival at Klaipėda Aerodrome. The An-2 aircraft was not tracked by the radar of the Palanga Control Centre.
Subsequently, the crew of the An-2 did not respond to repeated attempts by the Palanga centre to contact it. At 14:50, the An-2 aircraft was reported missing to the Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre. At 15:08, the search for the An-2 aircraft was launched.
On May 19, 2015, the aircraft was found on the seabed of the Baltic Sea at a depth of 124 metres, approximately 60 nautical miles (111 km) west of the Lithuanian coast.
Two more serious aviation accidents have occurred in Kaunas in recent years. On December 8, 2019, at around 14:00, a Piper PA-30 aircraft crashed west of the S. Darius and S. Girėnas Aerodrome in Kaunas District.
According to the accident report, the aircraft veered to the right side after take-off and soon landed in the yard of a private house in the village of Noreikiškės. The instructor and the student were fatally injured.
On August 8, 2022, at 20:04, a Bristell UL HD ultralight aircraft went into a spin and crashed close to the village of Armaniškės in Kaunas District.
“After a few laps at the aerodrome, the aircraft went into a spin and hit the ground. The impact resulted in a fire and the aircraft was destroyed,” the report states.
Both pilots were fatally injured in the crash.
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