On the morning of Monday, November 25, 2024, at around 5:30 a.m. local time, a Swiftair B737-400F cargo plane, operating for DHL, crashed near Vilnius Airport in Lithuania. The aircraft had departed from Leipzig (flight QY-5960) and was en route to Vilnius when it crashed during the landing phase approximately 1.3 kilometers from the runway. One crew member was killed, and three others were injured.
Preliminary information suggests that the aircraft – registered as EC-MFE – lost altitude during its approach to runway 19 at Vilnius Airport. After contacting the ground, it slid for about a hundred meters before crashing into two residential buildings, both of which caught fire. The plane carried four crew members, of whom one perished and three others were hospitalized. Fortunately, all twelve residents of the affected buildings emerged unscathed.
During the approach, the crew did not report any issues and maintained routine communication until the transfer to air traffic control. Weather conditions were not deemed critical, with temperatures around zero, low cloud cover, and winds of approximately 30 km/h. ADS-B data reveals that the aircraft had a high descent rate and airspeed during the final approach.
Investigators are currently questioning the hospitalized crew members to determine the causes of the crash. As of the morning of November 25, there were no indications of an explosion on board, but Lithuanian police have not ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack. This possibility is being considered because in recent weeks, incendiary packages have been found in air shipments at German and British airports.
On October 25, 2025, Polish police arrested four individuals suspected of sending incendiary packages through DHL. Prior to that, on September 19, another arrest took place in Lithuania in connection with the explosion of a package at Leipzig Airport during transfer between aircraft. Polish authorities have accused Russia of orchestrating these attacks as part of a hybrid warfare strategy against countries supporting Ukraine. In October 2024, they closed the Russian consulate in the Polish city of Poznań.
