Warsaw - A Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) plane crashed on landing in Lithuania's Vilnius airport early Wednesday morning, but none of 48 passengers and four crew members were injured, the Lithuanian BNS agency reported. Landing gear failure in the DHC Dash 8-400 aircraft was the apparent cause of the accident, according to Lithuanian authorities.
"Pilots of the plane, heading from Copenhagen to Palanga noticed the failure of the right gear and decided to make an emergency landing in Vilnius airport," Kestutis Auryla, director of the Lithuanian Civil Aviation Administration told BNS.
"The plane went off the runaway due to failure of the right gear but landing taking into account the situation was successful," he added.
"All passengers and members of the crew were safely evacuated," Auryla said.
Meanwhile SAS on Wednesday grounded all 33 of its Dash 8-400s after the second emergency landing of the propeller aircraft in four days because of problems with the landing gear.
"Scandinavian Airlines has decided to ground its entire Dash 8-400 fleet until further notice," SAS said in a statement.
On Sunday a Dash 8-400 crash-landed in Aalborg, Denmark. One of the plane's landing gears collapsed on landing and the plane caught fire. Five of its 69 passengers were hurt.
At the beginning of the week, two SAS aircraft on their way to Berlin and Prague had to turn around after technical defects were discovered.
