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Sunken An-2 aircraft not to be salvaged: Lithuanian gov't

Xinhua, June 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

Lithuanian government on Wednesday decided not to lift the sunken civilian An-2 aircraft from the Baltic seafloor.

"The airplane will not be salvaged at the moment, it could be salvaged only for two reasons: if it's owners would express their wish and reason for doing so and if the Prosecutor General's Office would see the need for this, due to additional information for their investigation," Algirdas Butkevicius, Lithuania's Prime Minister, told reporters on Wednesday, ELTA news agency reported.

According to Butkevicius, experts said that all the necessary information was gathered by video shooting, thus there would be no additional data found after lifting the airplane wreck.

The sunken airplane's technical condition also gives grounds to doubts that it would be possible to lift it successfully, Rimantas Sinkevicius, Lithuania's Transport Minister, added.

Based on experts' calculations, it would cost around 1 million euro to lift the sunken plane from the seafloor.

The An-2 aircraft went missing on May 16 en route from Sweden to Lithuania with two highly experienced pilots on board.

The plane was found three days later 63 nautical miles from the shore.

Body of just one pilot was later found inside the plane, while the second pilot is considered to be missing. Endit