Swiftair Boeing 737-400 crashes short of runway Vilnius Airport | Hacker News Reader

Swiftair Boeing 737-400 crashes short of runway Vilnius Airport

aviation24.be

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Reports of explosions prior to crash, local police does not rule out terror attack yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHBuOBxfJEk CCTV footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAUUteXo9rY ATC recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s57TOGrg-jU trajectory

https://avherald.com/h?article=520c0e2b&opt=0 avherald entry

Looks like CFIT. They flew below the glide slope and impacted the terrain.

Unexpected part of this is that most pilots survived the crash. I don't understand how that's possible given the explosion visible on CCTVs

The explosions triggered way before crash, terrorism not ruled out (see links below)

So if the plane exploded even in the air, how could the pilots survive?

Not much (public) data to back what I said. See the video I linked below

Going to follow avherald now

Where do you see that? All the videos I've seen show the plane flying fine on the glide slope but the tree line is obstructed on the camera, the explosions appear when the plane is way below the obstructions.

Edit: found a video I hadn't seen before, you can clearly see the airplane on the glide slope abruptly trying to pitch up before impact[0].

[0] https://v.redd.it/rhsqd0ntp03e1

Pilots were surprised

https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2422543/no-signs-of...

this is the best angle so far (it's linked to in your link as well)

https://youtu.be/MXyXgSu5CBE https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1gzhfx2/another_a...

"Plane... skidded several hundred metres" https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241125-dhl-cargo-pla...

Nothing in these videos indicate your initial statement though, there's no visible damage before the crash so I'm still puzzled on how you reached that initial conclusion.

I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that right now there's nothing I see to support there was an earlier explosion as you stated.

> The explosions triggered way before crash

Sorry I should have added that bit was my own deduction..

Since the explosion you see did not seem to be due to impact with treeline (seems to me plane stayed on the landing path until point of explosion )

https://youtu.be/uaDYV9IxJLo

No worries, I was trying to see if there was something public already indicating it since I'm also quite suspicious after Germany had reported finding a package in Frankfurt airport which could ignite and seemed like sabotage.

Thanks for clarifying!

They shouldn't have been in the point of impact in any case, so the root cause was something way before the impact, and cannot be seen on the video. Above in this thread is a link with the ATC recording, in which the pilot gives incorrect readbacks, indicating a typical CFIT where they just assumed all is fine until the last second when they tried to maneuver out of this. Hence the obvious surprise. The video seems to show they hit something at the tree top or streetlight level after the last second pullup/dive/bank/whatever that maneuver was.

I had to shorten the title due to limit. It was a cargo plane operating for DHL.

Honestly the shortening buried the fact that it's a cargo flight and made it more shocking/clickbaity - I heard about a plane crashing in Lithuania before I saw your headline so I was aware which crash was being referred to.

Adding " (DHL cargo) " before "crashes" would've fit the title limitations...

Discussion on https://avherald.com/h?article=520c0e2b&opt=0 seems to tend towards pilot error. Plane's ILS may not have locked on to glide slope and pilots went too low and too fast. Maybe missed the point where they should've gone around.

But all just speculation, and I'm just summarizing too. It'll take some time to get answers, all we seem to have right now is alarmist politicians milking the topic.

>all we seem to have right now is alarmist politicians milking the topic.

On the contrary, we have all sorts of escalation management appeasers trying to avoid putting any possible blame on Russia for this, despite constant EW and GPS jamming in the region.

Dude, you're embarassing yourself. They were below the intermittent cloud cover listed in METAR, landing in good visual conditions (yes, nighttime, but it's a city, you can see it). Even if they got full-spectrum interference thrown at them, they should and would have been able to go around. Aircraft safety culture is serious.

I am not talking about this case in isolation, neither am I saying that interference is a factor in this crash, but I am saying that so open acts of war (against our infrastructure, our safety equipment, our manufacturing etc) are spouted as "hybrid warfare" and are being severely downplayed as not to do anything about it, it's just weakness.

ILS approaches don't use GPS.

In regard to this plane in particular I've meant the packages that get caught on fire in DHL warehouses, besides ILS can be messed with as well, which is why I said EW in addition to GPS.

At first I thought Taylor Swift had an airline for her two planes...

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