UPS Plane Crash Near Louisville Airport Kills 9
15 people were injured and 16 remain missing.
The death toll from the UPS plane crash near the Louisville, KY, airport has risen to nine, and 15 people were injured.
Unfortunately, 16 people are still missing.
Gov. Andy Beshear believes those numbers will rise.
Thirteen people have left the hospital, but two remain in critical condition.
The plane headed to Honolulu, HI, crashed on Tuesday around 5:15 PM local time. The left wing caught on fire. From WLKY:
It was fully loaded with fuel for the long flight.
Video shows flames on the plane’s left wing and a trail of smoke as it lifted briefly off the ground before skidding off the runway.
The plane crashed in a massive fireball, with fire and debris quickly spreading over an industrial area near the end of the runway.
Multiple businesses were impacted, according to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, including Kentucky Petroleum Recycling which was hit “pretty directly.” A second business, Grade A Auto Parts, was also impacted, the governor said.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
Authorities issued a shelter-in-place “quarter mile radius of 7501 Grade Lane, the city’s hazardous waste drop-off just south of the airport.”
They also advised people and businesses within that area “to turn off any air in-take systems (heat or air conditioning) as soon as possible.”
The fire department put out all the fires by 11 PM ET.
The plane did not have any hazardous materials.
However, hazardous materials were found around the crash site.
“We are terribly saddened by the accident tonight in Louisville. Our heartfelt thoughts are with everyone involved. UPS is committed to the safety of our employees, our customers and the communities we serve. This is particularly true in Louisville, home to our airline and thousands of UPSers.
“We are engaged with the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the accident and are staying in close contact with the Federal Aviation Administration. We will work tirelessly with state and local authorities on response efforts.
“As a result of the accident, we are halting operations tonight at Worldport. The Next Day Air sort has been cancelled and employees should not report to work tonight.”
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Comments
The curious thing is that it had lots of excess speed (184 kts) which normally would be easily turned into altitude. I suspect asymmetric lift prevented that. Can’t climb without rolling left., as if slats on the left were damaged.
Correct…. remembering the American Airlines DC-10 in Chicago that also completely lost an engine… rupturing hydraulic control of leading edge flaps and ailerons. Left wing lost lift and rudder authority in that situation lost. If the pilots reflexively cranked in right down aileron then also stall. Reports… still uncorroborated of two hour delay for #1 engine issues. But a blown engine alone shouldn’t have resulted in this… something bigger happened…. and no way out of the crash. Was engine exchange/ pylon fatigue the same issue as AA. The L-1011 was a far better airplane but lost out to MD.
There’s a video taken (I believe) from a service vehicle near the airport gates that shows the aircraft just after rotation, and there’s already a large fire visible near the left wing root. Caused by the loss of the #1 engine with the airflow pulling the fire up and over the wing? Loss of an engine shouldn’t result in the loss of control over hydraulically powered control surfaces due to redundancies in the hydraulic system. But complete loss of engine power would cause asymmetric thrust, and losing the engine completely (as in dropping from the wing) would also add the complication of complete upset of the aircraft’s center of gravity, playing real hell with a fully loaded aircraft just lifting off the ground.
The Chicago DC-10 engine loss did wipe out the hydraulics… design was later modified after that but as to how much better , I don’t know. The total loss of the engine would reduce drag but all of this happened so quickly. As I said …. this was more than just a engine blowing up…which should be survivable…. this was something bigger. I bet the FAA requires another full check on engine pylons.
As an aside, remembering the DC-10 that had its tail engine frag wiping out rudder. The DC-10 had glaring issues. The redesign put more ballistic protection around tail engine.
You are so right…. this was the worst time for this. By speed, obligated to lift off. The plane hit the UPS building well below 100 feet. Never had a chance.
There’s another still picture that looks to show the entire engine on the grass next to the runway. There was video last night from a news helicopter that appeared to show damage to runway lighting next to the runway in the same general area. I know the AA191 incident at O’Hare involved a DC-10 (predecessor to the MD-11), but that engine fell off because it had been installed improperly and the mounts failed. That was supposedly remediated with design changes, but something clearly went badly wrong if the entire engine fell off during the takeoff run.
I’m thinking if the #1 engine fell off, the center of gravity would shift to the right, causing a control problem right there. But more importantly, it would have shifted to the rear (engines are mounted forward of the main gear, to keep the nose down with tricycle landing gear, so loss of an engine would shift the CG back). This shift might result in a nose high/tail down change in the angle of attack, possibly making take off impossible (maybe even actually inducing a stall).
Just musing here for the readers’ consideration. Obviously this aircraft was in major trouble just about the time of V1.
Comment on another channel… sparks coming out of #2, the rear engine… so … ingested debris from #1 (?) and so likely down to only one fully thrusting engine. Hopefully “black boxes” found intact.
The engine only weighs around 10,000 lbs and is mounted very close to the center of gravity. The main gear is not the center of gravity.
Losing a 10,000 pound engine on a 640,000 pound airplane would do very little to affect the CG.
The AA Chicago crash was the result of AA, among others, using forklifts to change engines without monitoring the loads on the pylon attach points.
This resulted in excessive fatigue/damage and failure. The engine/pylon was designed to separate cleanly over the wing if the engine failed catastrophically to prevent wing failure. In the Chicago accident the engine pylon did not separate “cleanly” due to the induced fatigue. This resulted in hydraulic damage and the slats retracting. Ironically the crew identified the loss of engine power but not the loss of slats. They followed engine power loss per the QRH which had them slow down. The slower speed resulted in the left wing stalling, with slats retracted, while the right wing maintained lift. This caused an unrecoverable roll to the left.
As an aside the L1011 was a superior design to the DC10. The L1011 used plug type cargo doors (Dc10 crashed in Europe when a cargo door closing mechanism failed allowing the cargo door to separate and then explosive decompression. None of which could happen with a plug door.)
L1011 was only commercial aircraft certified with 2 autopilot system to land in CAT3 conditions. All others required 3.
Lots of other superior design points to the L1011. Only real issue, and typical of Lockheed large aircraft wing design, was earlier than design life wing spar cracking. Expensive repair but no aircraft loss due to the flaw.
MD series was a later iteration of the DC series and was introduced after L1011 production ceased.
Sorry for lengthy technical post but I worked on L1011s for my entire career in line maintenance.
Great review of history.
The L-1011 was a superior aircraft design. Pretty plane. Advanced for its time.
Not really excess speed.
VR (rotation speed) is right around 180 knots in a fully loaded MD-11.
Damaged flaps/ slats or the #2 (tail) engine getting damaged from debris and not producing full power are also possible issues as even with losing an engine at V1, they should have been able to safely climb out.
Especially in takeoff configuration.
As I noted above…. #2 engine area abnormal… ? ingested debris showing as sparks/flames in the #2.
The #1 (left) engine sailed over the plane and landed in the grass to the right of the runway. Nacelle and all on right side. Debris trail down the runway… and into #2 engine as can be seen in video. So many videos out there really make it easier to see what happened.
What heck is a ‘kts’??
Knots, nautical miles per hour. There’s no real agreement about standardizing miles or kilometers but a nautical mile is one minute of latitude on the earth and seemed to be an acceptable unit to everybody.
Incredibly sad
My husband was a manager for 25 years at UPS
Solid company, lots of ex military, salt of the earth guys
I’m sure things have changed a lot, always do when
You
Go
Public, but terrible loss of life
rip
It was a takeoff accident, so at least we won’t have to hear for a month that it was all because Orange Hitler didn’t pay some air traffic controller.
Is it possible this was sabotage, time may tell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHW6HaS5mnc
Juan Brown….. major blogger to watch.
Dashcam
https://youtu.be/NEuGG6WGEF8