He confirmed that the team of the Dutch company Mammoet and other specialists had to cut short the inspection and return to the Lithuanian port city of Klaipėda in early hours of Wednesday on the Klaipėda University’s research vessel Mintis.
“The ship returned to Klaipėda yesterday (…). The conditions are rough, the airplane is covered in algae, the visibility is merely about two meters,” Rasčius told BNS.
Mammoet experts are currently examining the video footage provided by the submarine robots. Rasčius said the scrutiny did not reveal the second pilot’s body inside the aircraft.
In his words, further steps will be decided by a commission headed by the Transport and Communications Ministry in Vilnius on Wednesday afternoon.
The An-2 with two experienced pilots Adolfas Mačiulis and Alvydas Selmistraitis went missing above the Baltic Sea on May 16 en route from the Swedish city of Gothenburg to Klaipėda. Three days later, the airplane was discovered on the Baltic seafloor 124m below the surface over 100 kilometers from the Lithuanian coast. Body of at least one pilot was later found inside the plane.
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