A Boeing 737 crashed early this morning in Europe, while on final approach to an airport. While there are more questions than answers, let’s go over what we know as of now.
In this post:
Swiftair Boeing 737-400 cargo jet has fatal crash
This incident happened today (Monday, November 25, 2024), and involves a Swiftair Boeing 737-400 with the registration code EC-MFE. The 31-year-old jet was operating a cargo service on behalf of DHL, flying from Leipzig, Germany (LEJ), to Vilnius, Lithuania (VNO).
Shortly before 5:30AM local time this morning, the aircraft was on final approach to runway 19 at Vilnius Airport, after a 586-mile flight. About four nautical miles before landing, the aircraft was cleared for an ILS approach, and the approach controller told the pilots to contact the tower frequency.
The pilots never contacted the power, and then roughly one nautical mile from the runway threshold, the jet impacted a residential building and caught fire.
While the residential building was on fire, fortunately there were no injuries on the ground. There were four crew members onboard the jet. One crew member was immediately declared dead, while the other three were taken to hospitals with injuries. It’s not known how bad those injuries are.
VASAviation has an excellent recreation of the plane’s approach, plus the air traffic control audio, where you can hear one of the pilots communicating with the approach controller.
The Aviation Herald also has a good breakdown of what happened. Below are some videos of the crash from a distance.
For those not familiar with Swiftair, it’s a carrier headquartered in Madrid, which operates passenger and cargo flights, both on a scheduled and charter basis.
Let’s see what a crash investigation reveals
Authorities are currently investigating the cause of the crash, claiming it’s most likely due to technical causes or human error, but other causes, including terrorism, can’t be ruled out.
Were the pilots just on the wrong glide path, and they descended too early, and for some reason didn’t see the runway? Did the plane stall for some reason, like a sudden shift in the center of gravity due to cargo not being properly secured?
There are a couple of things that are noteworthy here. First of all, in the second video above, you can get a pretty clear picture of the plane’s path. It seems like it was approaching really low, and then suddenly the nose pitched down, at which point the plane crashed.
Furthermore, the pilots never reported any sort of an issue to air traffic control. Instead, communication just completely stopped after they finished communicating with the approach controller, and prior to contacting the tower frequency.
Admittedly pilots are always taught to “aviate, navigate, and communicate,” in that order, so communicating is the last priority in an emergency. But still, if there was any sudden emergency, you’d think they would have transmitted a “mayday,” or something. Obviously something went very wrong around the same time that they were supposed to switch frequencies.
I think it’s worth mentioning that a few weeks ago there was talk of a Russian terror plot to take down aircraft by igniting incendiary devices. A test run had been performed out of Leipzig, at a DHL facility. That’s probably unrelated, though it’s still noteworthy, given that we’re talking about a DHL contracted flight out of Leipzig.
Bottom line
A Swiftair Boeing 737-400 operating a cargo flight on behalf of DHL crashed while on approach to Vilnius today. Around one nautical mile before the runway threshold, the plane impacted a building, and burst into flames. Air traffic control communications had been totally normal, except for the pilots suddenly losing contact while switching frequencies.
My thoughts are with the family of the crew member who lost their life, and with the survivors, that they’re able to make a full recovery.
What do you make of this Swiftair Boeing 737 accident?
Most likely it's the Russians, the source of most of the troubles in the world. This is how Putin sends a "message" and their fingerprints are all over this.
The expectation of relative safety when flying, that we have all depended on for generations, is now over.
Make Aviation Great Again.
Russia derangement syndrome
Another view from a different angle;
https://youtu.be/MXyXgSu5CBE?si=s5yj67-zpDhRvx3n
RIP
Ben,
FLAero posted a video on LinkedIn that was a lot closer to the actual crash site. It's overlooking a hill, called Vilniuje Nukrito. Looks like they were traveling faster than they should on decent, then they clipped something and went over on themselves. Might be worth looking at.
I'm obviously not an air crash investigator, but I'm getting Turkish 1951 vibes.
Looks like they blew through the ILS due to the late misunderstanding of the clearance on the ILS - Z. Pure speculation, but they may have become task saturated trying to stabilize their approach on the localizer that they failed to notice they busted through the glide slope.
That’s very sad news. RIP to those on board.
Ben, just a small typo, instead of “never contacted the tower”, you wrote “never contacted the power”.
It was reported just 3 weeks ago that there were plots from Russia to get an explosive onboard a DHL aircraft departing Leipzig... I certainly hope that this isn't one of those.
@ Nolan -- That's a great point! I'll update the post to add that, thanks.
WSJ originally reported the threat I think:
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-plot-us-planes-incendiary-devices-de3b8c0a