Lithuanian Emergency Ministry employees work near the site where a DHL cargo plane crashed into a house near the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, Lithuania, on November 25, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house on Monday (November 25, 2024) morning near Lithuania’s capital, killing at least one person. The head of the country’s police said plane crashed shortly before landing at Vilnius airport.

“It fell a few kilometres before the airport, it just skidded for a few hundred metres, its debris somewhat caught a residential house,” said Police Commissioner-General Renatas Požėla. “Residential infrastructure around the house was on fire, and the house was slightly damaged, but we managed to evacuate people.”

Lithuanian’s public broadcaster LRT, quoting an emergency official, said two people had been taken to the hospital after the crash, and one was later pronounced dead.

The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a DHL cargo plane arriving from Leipzig, Germany. It posted on the social platform X that city services including a fire truck were on site.

Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24, analysed by The Associated Press, showed the aircraft made a turn to the north of the airport, lining up for landing, before crashing a little more than 1.5 km (1 mile) short of the runway.

Authorities did not immediately offer a cause for the crash, which happened just before 5:30 a.m. local time. Weather at the airport was around freezing temperature, with clouds before sunrise and winds around 30 kph (18 mph).

DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, did not immediately return a call for comment. The DHL aircraft was operated by Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor. The carrier could not be immediately reached.

The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe, though that’s not unusual for cargo flights.