Lithuania currently rules out sabotage as the cause of the plane crash in which a Spanish pilot died

The Minister of National Defense of Lithuania acting, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, assured this Wednesday that the first analyzes in relation to the DHL plane crash on Monday at airport Vilnius in which the Spanish pilot dieddo not point to an act of sabotage.

In statements to the media in Parliament collected by Lithuanian radio and television LRT, Kasčiūnas noted that with everything we currently have and know from preliminary analyzes and interviews with crew members, ““There are no indications that there could have been an act of sabotage.”.

After a meeting of the National Security and Defense Committee, he added that the visual analysis reflects that “there was no outside influence” in the crashed plane and indicated that the examination of the black boxes will show “what could have happened inside.”

On the other hand, the first interviews with the three surviving crew members, including another Spaniard, also do not show signs of concern that something was happening, whether it was smoke or some problem inside the device, he indicated.

The minister stated that before trying to link this event to the activities of hostile states, it is very important to base it on facts and attribution must be accurate, detailed and verifiedalthough he also said he did not want to rule out anything.

En tanto, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, jefe del Centro Nacional de Gestión de Crisis, indicó que una comisión internacional con expertos de tres países visitarán este miércoles el lugar donde se estrelló el avión e inspeccionarán los restos del aparato, al tiempo que señaló que por el momento todo apunta más bien a un fallo técnico.

Agregó que las cajas negras se llevarán este miércoles a un laboratorio especializado, posiblemente en otro país europeo, y precisó que el análisis de las mismas puede llevar hasta un mes.

Los datos de las cajas negras contribuirán a determinar si hubo un fallo técnico y, a continuación, correlacionar los datos de las cajas negras con los detalles del avión, añadió.

En el accidente, en el que murió el piloto, un español de 48 años, resultaron heridos otros tres tripulantes, de nacionalidad española, alemana y lituana, respectivamente.

El avión, un Boeing 737-476 (SF) de la compañía española Swiftair, cubría el trayecto desde la ciudad alemana de Leipzig hasta la capital lituana y se estrelló cerca del aeropuerto y un edificio residencial.