One member of a four-person crew was killed when a Boeing 737-400 operated by Spanish charter carrier Swiftair on behalf of express package group DHL crashed on final approach to Lithuania's Vilnius Airport (EYVI) early this morning. The flight originated in Leipzig, where German police are investigating a suspicious fire at a DHL warehouse, but Lithuanian officials said they have no specific grounds to suspect terrorism.

The flight departed Leipzig soon after 3 a.m. local time, before crashing into a building close to EYVI at around 5.30 a.m. Reuters reported Lithuania’s National Aviation Agency as saying that the Swiftair pilots had not given air traffic controllers any indication of problems with the aircraft as it prepared to land in temperatures close to freezing point and with winds of around 16 knots. Three crewmembers survived with injuries and no one was killed on the ground.

In recent weeks, Lithuanian police have made arrests as part of an investigation into incendiary devices that appear to have been placed on aircraft flying to locations, including the UK. British counterterrorism officers are investigating a July 22 fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham.

During the same month, a package caught fire in the company’s Leipzig warehouse, and last week the German intelligence service confirmed to parliament that the package could have caused an aircraft to crash had it caught fire in flight. With Russia's conflict with Ukraine escalating in recent weeks, European governments have expressed concern about possible assymetrical warefare attacks on Western targets by operatives backed by the Putin Administration. 

Swiftair has been approach to comment on the incident, which DHL acknowledged, confirming that the aircraft had "made a forced landing about one kilometer from the airport." In September 2022, a 737-400 operated by Madrid-based Swiftair overran a runway at Montpellier Méditeranée Airport in France.