Lithuania says it sees no signs of sabotage in the DHL cargo plane crash

VILNIUS, Lithuania — An investigation into last month’s crash of a DHL cargo plane as it approached Vilnius airport found no signs of “unauthorized interference”, the Lithuanian government said on Friday.

Early in the morning on November 25, the plane fell and crashed into a house. A Spanish crew member was killed and three other crew members were injured, but no one on the ground was injured.

At the time, officials acknowledged that one focus of the investigation would be whether Russia played a role, given its suspected involvement in the sabotage incidents, although they stressed that there was no evidence to suggest that.

Lithuania’s Justice Ministry said in a statement on Friday that after preliminary analysis of the Boeing 737’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, as well as an examination of evidence from the crash site, “no signs of unauthorized interference were found.”

The DHL plane was operated by the Madrid-based contractor Swiftair. The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, and experts consider it an older airframe, although this is not unusual for cargo flights.