- A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house near Lithuania’s Vilnius airport.
- The plane was a Boeing 737 aircraft en route from Leipzig, Germany.
- At least one person was killed in the crash, according to multiple media reports.
A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house near Lithuania’s Vilnius airport, killing at least one person and injuring three others.
The plane, a Boeing 737 aircraft en route from Leipzig, Germany, crashed outside the Vilnius Airport at around 5:30 a.m. local time, the airport said on Facebook.
“We can confirm that today at around 4:30 am CET an aircraft of Swift Air, a third-party carrier operating under contract for DHL, which was on its way from LEJ Airport (Leipzig, Germany) to VNO Airport (Vilnius, Lithuania), made a forced landing about one kilometer from VNO Airport,” a DHL spokesperson told BI.
“There was a total of four people on board. The status of the crew is still being clarified,” the spokesperson said, adding that the cause of the accident is still unknown, and an investigation is underway.
There has been at least one death as a result of the crash, the AP and Reuters reported.
All 12 residents of the house that was crashed into are safe and have been evacuated, Reuters reported, citing information from a police press conference.
“It fell a few kilometers before the airport, it just skidded for a few hundred meters, its debris somewhat caught a residential house,” said Renatas Požėla, head of Lithuania’s firefighting and emergency services unit, the AP reported.
“Residential infrastructure around the house was on fire, and the house was slightly damaged, but we managed to evacuate people,” he added, per the AP.
The mayor of the city, Valdas Benkunskas, told Lithuanian news broadcaster LRT that the plane had missed the house “by chance” and crashed into its courtyard instead.