Haunting audio from the cockpit of a DHL cargo plane that crashed into a massive fireball in Lithuania on Monday (25 November) has left listeners scratching their heads over the cause of the accident.
Travelling from Leipzig, Germany, to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, the Boeing 737-400 aircraft was just one mile from the runway when it burst into flames at about 5.30am local time on Monday.
Security footage saw the plane gliding towards the ground in the distance at a hazardous low altitude before crashing.
The aircraft angled slightly to the right, crashing into the earth and lighting up the sky.
The plane burst into flames when it made contact with the ground (X)
Photos of the crashed aircraft highlighted how severe the incident was, as debris was found across the icy ground, with firefighters coming to the rescue to put the blaze out.
The aircraft just missed a motorway and several nearby homes before crash landing in a wooded area, colliding with a two-storey residence and one of the four-person crew onboard, according to Lithuanian Police Commissioner General Arunas Paulauskas.
He told local news outlet LRT that authorities managed to save the remaining three from the wreckage, while 12 people were evacuated from the residential building with no further injuries.
Lithuania's National Crisis Management Centre's experts have been deployed to investigate the cause of the crash.
But now, cockpit audio prior to the incident has been released, revealing that communication between the pilots and air traffic control was normal before the crash.
Chillingly, the pilot and the air traffic controllers exchanged greetings and even clarified the correct runway that it was supposed to land at.
After this exchange, the plane made its final approach, though comms went silent as air traffic control tried to get in touch with the aircraft.
After a number of seconds of radio silence, those in the tower realised that the freight plane had crashed into the ground a mile away, as the audio recording captures the controller hurriedly passing on messages, informing other aircrafts to abort landing or takeoff as the emergency situation needed to be attended to.
The air traffic controller could be heard saying: "Cancel your start-up, go back to your stand... we just got a crash of an aircraft on final... a Boeing 737."
It's not just the public that think that the recording was peculiar though, as the head of the Lithuanian National Aviation Authority, Marius Baranauskas, mentioned the odd nature of the audio.
He stated: "In the recording of the conversation between the pilots and the tower, the pilots until the very last second did not tell the tower of any extraordinary event,
"We need to examine the black boxes to know what was happening in the aircraft," Baranauskas said.
Only one onboard died, with those in the residential building uninjured (X)
Head of the centre, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, told LRT that there was no information that suggested that there was an explosion before the crash, adding that it 'may be related to technical problems', but highlighted that it is still 'too early' to be precise.
Police Commissioner Paulauskas did not rule out the possibility of it being a terrorist act, though noted that it 'was most likely due to a technical fault or a human error', noting that investigators has gone to the hospital to speak with the pilots involved.
Flight data from FlightRadar24 showed that the plane turned north of the airport to line up for landing, before landing a mile short of the runway.
DHL stated that the aircraft was operated by partner SwiftAir, and was attempting an 'emergency landing'.
In a statement, they said: "We can confirm that at approximately 4.30 am CET, a Swiftair aircraft, operated by a service partner on behalf of DHL, performed an emergency landing about one kilometre from VNO Airport (Vilnius, Lithuania) while en route from LEJ Airport (Leipzig, Germany) to VNO Airport."
Following the incident, Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas called an emergency situation, restricting traffic on roads near the airport.
"We will urgently declare an emergency situation in the area to ensure the rapid liquidation of the consequences of the accident – cleaning up the territory, collecting harmful materials," he said in a statement this morning (26 November).
English (US) ·