> Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the engine #1 separated during the takeoff run, the center engine emitted streaks of flames, the aircraft impacted a UPS warehouse and ploughed through other facilities before coming to rest in a large plume of fire and smoke.
PPRuNe[1] is another good one. Just be aware that all of these sites have a mixture of commentary by professionals in the air transport industry, amateur enthusiasts, and random bystanders.
Best advice is always to wait for authoritative statements.
Oh woah, very insightful discussion thread you found there.
So the tl'dr is: the leading very preliminary theory is that the MD-11's left engine fell off the wing just like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191 (a DC-10, the immediate predecessor of the MD-11) which was caused by maintenance errors weakening the pylon structure holding the engine.
The parallels with AA Flight 191 are striking. In THAT accident it was found [1]:
1) improper maintenance—American Airlines had used a forklift shortcut to remove the engine and pylon together, rather than following McDonnell Douglas’s prescribed method
2) The detachment tore away part of the wing’s leading edge, rupturing hydraulic lines and severing electrical power to key systems, including the slat-position indicator and stall warning (stick shaker).
3) The pilots followed the standard engine-out procedure and reduced airspeed to V₂, which caused the aircraft to stall and roll uncontrollably left. This procedure was later found out to be incorrect.
Defective maintenance practices, inadequate oversight, vulnerabilities in DC-10 design, and unsafe training procedures combined to cause the crash, killing all 273 people on board and leading to sweeping reforms in airline maintenance and certification standards.
What strikes me as odd is that this looks like the "naked" engine, without the cowling/nacelle that usually surrounds it? Anyway, if an engine departs the aircraft shortly after (last-minute) maintenance was performed on it, that's indeed suspicious...
The engine that fell off (!) had been worked on for two hours at Louisville, KY immediately before takeoff. Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame.
Maybe the maintenance is better in the other country.
Either way, to say it's "likely relevant" is a huge leap. We have no idea what caused the crash - it could be a million things and likely some combintation of them.
"TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections"
There are foreign planes entering US airspace every day, carrying thousands of passengers. They are also serviced by foreign technicians, outside the reach of the FAA's inspections, and they seem to be doing just fine.
"Foreign" in itself isn't bad, you just need to choose/require reputable partners. If you outsource your maintenance to the same crews that maintain jets for Polish LOT or Taiwanese China Airlines, you may save some money and yet get excellent service, as those airlines aren't known for having safety problems.
I wonder what the FAA does organizationally that lets it function properly to find cause. It must be highly tempting to blame things on the foreigners and stuff like that. The Air India crash had a lot of that going on.
The 737 Max crashes were also so frequently explained by online commenters as because of “outsourced software engineers” and so on.
But the FAA/NTSB always comes through with fact finding despite the immense political pressure to find these facile explanations. Organizationally, someone once designed these things well, and subsequently it has been preserved so well.
When I see so many American institutions turned to partisan causes through an escalation of “well, they’re doing it” it’s pretty wild that this org remains trustworthy. Wild.
> TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections
Foreign Repair Stations date back to the 90s [1], the thing is they need to be supervised by an FAA Certified Mechanic. Inspection of these was already a hot issue in the early '00s... No one gave a fuck, it was all about saving costs for a very long time.
The linked 2007 report's second page (!) already leads with this:
> Since 2001, eight commercial air carriers have gone through bankruptcy and one has ceased operations. Fuel prices remain high, and this makes cost control a key factor in both the sustained profitability and overall survival of an airline.
IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO for 70$, that's not sustainable.
The damage on the ground is scary to look at. I think the only silver lining here is that it was "just" a sparser industrial area and there weren't any homes. I'm really curious about what the investigation will reveal in a few months. This doesn't look like a "regular" engine fire from a bird strike or so, you would normally expect the flames to come out the back and not over the wing. And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines, although flames on a wing is probably "really really bad" just by itself already. Too early to speculate about what happened though.
Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an airport that has a high density of people, precisely to limit casualties during an event like this. Industrial would be permitted while residential and commercial use is not.
Scarily there are communities that have ignored such logic and permitted dense residential development right next to an airport.
> And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines
Flying with two engines and taking off without an engine in a loaded aircraft are two very different things. A lot more thrust is needed during takeoff than after.
The ground damage in the recent North Philadelphia Airport crash was only due to a chartered jet, but it practically wiped out a residential city block.
Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane crash.
I also lived not too far from that location, and unfortunately got a glimpse of the aircraft as it was spiraling down. The scene on the ground was pretty hellish.
This is probably the worst way a plane could go down in terms of damage caused. Maximum effect in term of damage. Cargo plane apparently reached V1 (go/no go speed) on the runway, and suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They passed V1, so they knew they were going down. Engine was shedding large debris, including the housing (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.
They were on fire just as they reached V1.
Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead at 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else, instead of go beyond the runway at that speed. Accelerating a fully loaded jet plane at ground level beyond the runway has obvious consequences. They had one choice.
Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low, they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by before this, footage shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground like a mousetrap by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.
Physics took over. Plane flipped and rolled upon loss of port wing, smearing a rolling fireball of the remaining fuel load from the starboard wing for another half a mile.
Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
Respect to the flight crew; rest in peace, they made the best they could out of a really shitty scenario. They flew it all the way down.
Standard procedure at V1 is commit to the takeoff and diagnose the problem in-air. Much of your comment is pure speculation until flight data recorders come back, we have no idea what the crew was thinking or what issues they were even aware of.
It's a few blocks of fire. I was on Tanker 4565 standing by as a backfill for units on scene. It's no where near "All of Louisville", that's a ridiculous thing to say.
It was around 250k gallons of fuel. Our CAD notes on the initial dispatch said 250k, one press briefing said 280k, and then it was changed to 220k which I think is the actual number.
> they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway at ground level
Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this, and breaking failures following landings.
> Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this
Ha, Jeju Air Flight 2216 smashed into a barrier on the second landing attempt in Muan last year [0], and people commented "How could there be a barrier at the end of the runway, so obviously stupid, irresponsible", etc.
Now a plane does not smash into a barrier at the end of the runway and people suggest putting barriers at the end of the runway.
Don't mean to attack parent post, but may I suggest that
a) hordes of experts have thought long and hard about these issues, and it is unlikely that you can encounter this for the first time as a lay person and come up with a solution that has eluded the best engineers for decades ("why don't they attach a parachute to the plane?"), and
b) we are very close to an optimum in commercial aviation, and there are few if any unambiguous ("Pareto") improvements, but rather just tradeoffs. For example: You leave cockpit doors open, terrorists come in and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon. You lock the cockpit doors closed, and suicidal pilots lock out the rest of the crew and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon of mass-murder-suicide.
Consider the possibility that gigantic flying aluminum tubes filled with tons of flammable fuel hurtling around at hundreds of kilometers per hour comprise a dilemma that has no trivial answers. Even defining what "important thing" means at any given instant is not straightforward.
Unless you have a berm several dozen meters high with a 100 meter base, you ain't stopping something like this from a physics standpoint unfortunately.
Many airports have this problem. The recent korean air disaster which echos this is another example. BTW, this is why most airports, if possible, point out to sea...
Some runways have been extended with ‘engineered materials’ surfaces, often a form of porous concrete into which an airliner’s wheels will sink, absorbing a lot of energy and arresting the airplane without causing it to break up. It is very effective for landing overruns, but I don’t know about last-seconds aborted takeoffs.
Security/debris fencing yes, but that's like, orders of magnitude short of what would stop the amount of energy we're talking about here.
You also don't particularly want it to be catastrophically effective as there are real world cases where planes have clipped the fence and then NOT gone on to crash, or at least to crash in a fairly controlled manner with the majority onboard surviving. Hitting a brick wall at 180mph is going to have a 0% survival rate.
It depends on whether or not, at the point in which you realize you have an engine on fire, you have room on the runway left to stop.
As I understand it, there is a low speed regime, under 80 knots, where are you stop for basically anything.
Then there is a high speed regime, where you only stop for serious issues, because you now have so much kinetic energy that stopping the plane, while still possible, will involve risk. (i.e. fire from overheated brakes.)
At a certain point, called V1, there’s no longer enough room to stop, no matter what your problem is. You’re either getting airborne or you’re crashing into whatever is ant the end of the runway. In general, getting airborne is the safer option, while obviously still not risk free.
However, this calculation also assumes that the engine fails in an isolated fashion, and its failure did not affect the other engines. If the failure of the left engine threw off debris that damaged the middle engine then we are now talking about a double engine failure. I’m sure the pilots knew there was a problem with the engine when they made the decision to continue, but it’s possible that problems with the middle engine weren’t apparent yet and that it only started to fail once they were committed.
Obviously, this is just speculation, and we will have to wait for the preliminary report at least.
V1 is the speed at which you can still stop the plane before the end of the runway. (It is computed for each takeoff based on runway length, aircraft mass, takeoff engine power setting, flaps, wind, runway condition, etc.)
When the plane reaches V1, pilots take the hand off the throttle: they're committed to takeoff, even if an engine fails. It is better to take off and fix the problem or land again, than to smash into whatever is beyond the end of the runway.
To avoid mass casualties at the end of the runway - on the road, or the buildings that the runway points to. Check the layout on google maps.
More specifically, V1 is the max speed at which you're about to take off, but you can still abort from. They hit that max speed and realized there was a major problem that hypothetically, they could have slowed down from, but realistically was not possible. They had no choice.
Work place related accidents always have a certain tragedy to them. Still remember when in the industrial park, my employer is located in, tanks belonging to a trash incinerator for special chemical waste exploded, taking several people with it.
>> highway and warehouses at the end of the runway
It's astonishing that this is a thing. Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation? I can understand why it can't be retro fitted to existing airports but is it a scenario that's considered at new airports? Just seems like such an absolutely basic safety step.
> Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation?
But that's exactly what a runway is? They're extremely long, have ample safety margins, and have "protected areas" extending out on either end, and outside of that there are regulations about what can and can't be built along the extendend runway centerlines. But jetliners are huge, heavy, fast, and designed to go long distances - the stopping distance of a fully loaded jet at full takeoff speed is measured in miles.
Yes, new major airports (rare as they are) do try to acquire large areas of land, larger even than they think they need now, in anticipation of future expansion. However, for scenarios like this, there's limited utility to making the runway longer "just in case." They already pick runway sizes "big enough and then some" as the minimum to even bring planes of each size to an airport. So there is margin.
But no matter the margin, a plane can always crash on the wrong side of any fence. And people will always build right up to wherever you put the fence as closer to the airport is more convenient for everything airport related.
Airports are usually built (originally) out in the boonies away from the major metro area. As time goes by and that land gets more valuable developers grease palms of politicians in land use commissions to allow developments closer and closer to the airports.
Airports also grow themselves. Some municipal airports sited for small aircraft extend their runways to handle larger planes.
It does make me wonder: why are aircraft takeoffs and landings not recorded more often, with higher quality cameras and more angles? If I can watch an NFL replay in 4k a few seconds after the ball is snapped, why not record (and overwrite) all flights that take off and land at every airport?
Like a dash cam, they can save the footage only if there is a problem. Surely that would be much better than splicing together many third party camera recordings.
Most frequently the actions/evidence that lead to a crash would not be captured on airport-located cameras. The holes in the swiss cheese usually start lining up either in the maintenance hangar, en route, or in the briefing room, not on the runway.
The NTSB (and many of their non-US counterparts) are incredibly adept at accident investigation using debris, black boxes and CVRs. Even in cases where the black boxes are damaged and video evidence is available, the video evidence is usually not so helpful as to be able to determine a root cause.
If you take into account that the cameras would be mostly useless in low-light or poor visibility conditions, and the costs associated with maintaining a nationwide network of high-res cameras that cover all runways at all major commercial airports (and ensures their lines of sight and operation through the never-ending renovations going on at these airports), I'm not sure that the benefits of having the cameras make sense.
Because aviation is already incredibly, ridiculously safe compared to essentially every other activity humanity undertakes, and adding additional cost, complexity and expense to the system would produce zero discernible benefit relative to the cost.
This is probably the worst way a plane could go down. Maximum effect in term of damage. Cargo plane apparently reached V1 (go/no go speed) on the runway, and suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They passed V1, so they knew they were going down. Engine was shedding large debris, including the housing (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.
They were on fire just as they reached V1.
Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway at ground level at 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else.
Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low, they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by then, footage shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.
Plane flipped, continued to smear half of the fuel load for another half a mile.
> They passed V1, so they knew they were going down.
To know this, they would have to know they had lost multiple engines. Clearly this is the case by the end, but it's not clear who realized what at what time.
From wikipedia, Boeing stopped producing MD-11 since 2,000. Does that mean any MD-11 flying is at least 25 years old? I know 25-year is not particularly old for aircrafts, but MD-11 is not exactly reliable. Is there any reason UPS is flying these planes?
Airframes have a limited lifetime, partially defined by takeoffs and landings (and pressurization cycles). Cargo planes experience fewer cycles than passenger airlines since cargo carriers' aircraft usually only make a one or two flights a day, whereas passenger aircraft a flown back to back as frequently as possible. Historically, cargo carriers would buy used aircraft and convert them, but that's changing.
This particular aircraft was acquired by UPS in 2006 and converted for cargo missions. It was originally delivered as a passenger aircraft to Thai Airways International in 1991. [1] I actually saw this exact aircraft at RDU International in August of this year and took a photo, since tri-engine aircraft in general are not very common these days.
The gist is correct, but the subtleties are hiding in the details.
Wide-body (long-haul) airplanes are generally limited by flying hours since they rarely reach their maximum allowed flight cycles.
In contrast, wide-body cargo planes typically fly shorter legs compared to when they are used as passenger carriers. And as a result, they are much more likely to hit their critical cycle limit.
This really reminded me of a colleague who had a part-time night job flying cancelled checks from Centennial Airport (KAPA, south of Denver) to SLC. A bunch of us went out to lunch on a Friday in December 2005. That night, on his return to KAPA, he crashed his Mitsubishi MU-2 about a mile short of the runway. He and his co-pilot were gone, just like that. On Monday you could see the wreckage and cleanup from our office which was near the airport. It was so surreal.
KAPA is a beautiful airport too, and its restaurant "Perfect Landing" on the second floor is S-tier. I've never heard about this case there, though. Do you have a flight number?
Relative of mine is a real estate agent in the Louisville area. This year she sold two homes to two UPS pilots. One of them, his first day was yesterday. The day of the crash. He was bumped from that very flight.
I didn’t realize the MD-11 was still in use. It has had a difficult time in passenger aviation.
Looks really nasty. It seems to have come down in an industrial area, which will significantly reduce casualties. I can’t even imagine this, in a residential area.
I think it's fair to say the MD11 has had a difficult time, but I would caveat that it performs well for an aircraft of its vintage, and is still an acceptably safe aircraft. There have been something in the neighborhood of 2.4 million successful missions completed with the MD11, and around 12 hull losses with fatalities, around 14 hull losses total, over the 35 years the MD11 has been flying. Yes, it's below average compared to modern wide bodies (a330, a350, newer 777/787) which are incredibly (truly incredible to me) safe.
I do expect this incident will accelerate the retirement of the balance of the fleet that is still flying and the MD11 will complete its disappearance from the skies in the US before the end of the decade.
I had just seen and admired a UPS MD-11 making it's climbing turn after takeoff from ONT earlier that day. They are quite capable and a beautiful aircraft.
You really want an LLM hallucinating that everything is ok and turning your air back on? Or hallucinating that everything was always ok and not turning your air off in the first place?
Early reports suggest the left engine separated during takeoff after maintenance work earlier that day. It’s a tragic reminder of how even small mechanical issues can turn catastrophic in seconds. Hope the NTSB can clarify what went wrong to prevent future accidents.
that the engine tore off meakes the likelyhood of significant damage to critical flight control systems quite high, any such damage would have been asymetric and counteracting forces inducing a roll may have been impossible.
you know they tried
But was un-discoverable? Or un-preventable? Seems plane inspectors and safety-related roles were affected and have been furloughed:
> But for the people involved in inspecting our planes to ensure they follow Federal Aviation Administration safety standards, the situation is more complicated. While principal aviation inspectors were told to keep working, assistant-level inspectors and other support staff were sent home and then had to be recalled.
Another DC-10/MD-11 crash.
Does UPS perform their own engine maintenance, or do they outsource the work?
What is the effect of the recent layoff of 40,000 and the current cost-cutting project?
The last MD-11 crash with deaths was in 2009 and the last DC-10 kerfuffle was when their unapproved replacement parts fell on the runway and killed the Concorde. I wonder if flight 232 gave them a bad name - everybody seems to know that accident. Looks like have a good record otherwise.
Maybe wait with the judgements until the report is in? There are so many possible reasons why this could have happened that have nothing to do with the two items you listed (though it maybe that it does, it is just a bit pointless to assign blame before you know what the cause of the accident was).
I mean the engine is laying on the side of the runway and the plane is seen on fire trying to take off; I'm going to go out on a limb and say maintenance was somehow involved.
the fact that stuff like this still happens (despite the relatively low probability/ incident rate) is truly mind boggling. the acceptability threshold for this need to be lower
https://archive.is/cdKm0
The AVHerald is usually the best source for these things, rather than MSM: https://avherald.com/h?article=52f5748f&opt=0
> Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the engine #1 separated during the takeoff run, the center engine emitted streaks of flames, the aircraft impacted a UPS warehouse and ploughed through other facilities before coming to rest in a large plume of fire and smoke.
We updated it, thanks. (Original URL was https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-plane-crash-louisville-kent...).
PPRuNe[1] is another good one. Just be aware that all of these sites have a mixture of commentary by professionals in the air transport industry, amateur enthusiasts, and random bystanders.
Best advice is always to wait for authoritative statements.
https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/669082-ups-md11...
It'd be nice if they offered an RSS feed
https://archive.is/cdKm0
My IP was blocked, for some reason.
You mean AV Herald? The site says you can't use a relay service to access it. For example, Apple Private Relay.
Oh woah, very insightful discussion thread you found there.
So the tl'dr is: the leading very preliminary theory is that the MD-11's left engine fell off the wing just like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191 (a DC-10, the immediate predecessor of the MD-11) which was caused by maintenance errors weakening the pylon structure holding the engine.
The parallels with AA Flight 191 are striking. In THAT accident it was found [1]:
1) improper maintenance—American Airlines had used a forklift shortcut to remove the engine and pylon together, rather than following McDonnell Douglas’s prescribed method
2) The detachment tore away part of the wing’s leading edge, rupturing hydraulic lines and severing electrical power to key systems, including the slat-position indicator and stall warning (stick shaker).
3) The pilots followed the standard engine-out procedure and reduced airspeed to V₂, which caused the aircraft to stall and roll uncontrollably left. This procedure was later found out to be incorrect.
Defective maintenance practices, inadequate oversight, vulnerabilities in DC-10 design, and unsafe training procedures combined to cause the crash, killing all 273 people on board and leading to sweeping reforms in airline maintenance and certification standards.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6iU7Mmf330
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This video from an aviation youtuber contains a picture of the engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4q2ORhIQQc&t=526s (the video itself is also worth watching in full IMHO).
What strikes me as odd is that this looks like the "naked" engine, without the cowling/nacelle that usually surrounds it? Anyway, if an engine departs the aircraft shortly after (last-minute) maintenance was performed on it, that's indeed suspicious...
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Also Blancolirio Youtube is very insightful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3lXl9yfISM
This is likely relevant
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance...
TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections
The engine that fell off (!) had been worked on for two hours at Louisville, KY immediately before takeoff. Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame.
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Maybe the maintenance is better in the other country.
Either way, to say it's "likely relevant" is a huge leap. We have no idea what caused the crash - it could be a million things and likely some combintation of them.
There's a lag time between such cost saving measures and piles of dead people.
See also how FAA allowed Boeing to oversee its own certification for MAX.
"TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections"
There are foreign planes entering US airspace every day, carrying thousands of passengers. They are also serviced by foreign technicians, outside the reach of the FAA's inspections, and they seem to be doing just fine.
"Foreign" in itself isn't bad, you just need to choose/require reputable partners. If you outsource your maintenance to the same crews that maintain jets for Polish LOT or Taiwanese China Airlines, you may save some money and yet get excellent service, as those airlines aren't known for having safety problems.
Kosovo or South Sudan would be a different story.
I wonder what the FAA does organizationally that lets it function properly to find cause. It must be highly tempting to blame things on the foreigners and stuff like that. The Air India crash had a lot of that going on.
The 737 Max crashes were also so frequently explained by online commenters as because of “outsourced software engineers” and so on.
But the FAA/NTSB always comes through with fact finding despite the immense political pressure to find these facile explanations. Organizationally, someone once designed these things well, and subsequently it has been preserved so well.
When I see so many American institutions turned to partisan causes through an escalation of “well, they’re doing it” it’s pretty wild that this org remains trustworthy. Wild.
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> TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections
Foreign Repair Stations date back to the 90s [1], the thing is they need to be supervised by an FAA Certified Mechanic. Inspection of these was already a hot issue in the early '00s... No one gave a fuck, it was all about saving costs for a very long time.
The linked 2007 report's second page (!) already leads with this:
> Since 2001, eight commercial air carriers have gone through bankruptcy and one has ceased operations. Fuel prices remain high, and this makes cost control a key factor in both the sustained profitability and overall survival of an airline.
IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO for 70$, that's not sustainable.
[1] https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/Web_File_Foreign...
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Video of the crash, left (?) engine was already engulfed in flames while taking off
https://x.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930
https://xcancel.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930
Edit: just the mp4 https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1985845862409334784/pu/...
There is an incredible amount of ground damage! Just wow, this is very bad https://files.catbox.moe/3303ob.jpg
The damage on the ground is scary to look at. I think the only silver lining here is that it was "just" a sparser industrial area and there weren't any homes. I'm really curious about what the investigation will reveal in a few months. This doesn't look like a "regular" engine fire from a bird strike or so, you would normally expect the flames to come out the back and not over the wing. And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines, although flames on a wing is probably "really really bad" just by itself already. Too early to speculate about what happened though.
Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an airport that has a high density of people, precisely to limit casualties during an event like this. Industrial would be permitted while residential and commercial use is not.
Scarily there are communities that have ignored such logic and permitted dense residential development right next to an airport.
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> And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines
Flying with two engines and taking off without an engine in a loaded aircraft are two very different things. A lot more thrust is needed during takeoff than after.
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An accident on takeoff means full tanks - some 38000 gallons(?) spread along the site like a napalm strike.
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The ground damage in the recent North Philadelphia Airport crash was only due to a chartered jet, but it practically wiped out a residential city block.
Looks like a compressor stall on number two engine two seconds into the video.
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The second video here shows an incredibly close view of the impact from a nearby dashcam.
https://www.wdrb.com/news/ups-plane-catches-fire-and-explode...
> There is an incredible amount of ground damage!
It's fortunate it wasn't taking off the other direction, towards the adjacent downtown of Louisville (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Louisville+International+A...)
News site - video obfuscated.
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That is an incredible video.
From what I read they engine caught fire right after they hit V1, so basically the only option was to take off and solve the problem in the air
UPS2976
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/UPS2976
Oh wow...
In 1986, I lived a mile or so from where a mid-air collision sent a DC-9 crashing into a neighborhood, which killed 15 people on the ground: https://www.presstelegram.com/2016/08/30/cerritos-plane-cras...
Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane crash.
> Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house
To be fair, statistically, your living room is far more dangerous than the cabin of an airplane.
Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in it?
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I also lived not too far from that location, and unfortunately got a glimpse of the aircraft as it was spiraling down. The scene on the ground was pretty hellish.
> I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane crash.
According to Garp, you just need to buy a pre-disastered home. You'll be safe there.[^1]
(Unfortunately his logic is flawed.[^2])
[^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3TuoGVNbBs
[^2]: https://xkcd.com/795/
This is probably the worst way a plane could go down in terms of damage caused. Maximum effect in term of damage. Cargo plane apparently reached V1 (go/no go speed) on the runway, and suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They passed V1, so they knew they were going down. Engine was shedding large debris, including the housing (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.
They were on fire just as they reached V1.
Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead at 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else, instead of go beyond the runway at that speed. Accelerating a fully loaded jet plane at ground level beyond the runway has obvious consequences. They had one choice.
Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low, they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by before this, footage shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground like a mousetrap by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.
Physics took over. Plane flipped and rolled upon loss of port wing, smearing a rolling fireball of the remaining fuel load from the starboard wing for another half a mile.
Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
Respect to the flight crew; rest in peace, they made the best they could out of a really shitty scenario. They flew it all the way down.
Footage:
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1985845987684855969?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985849267152699741?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985848132500885995?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985843126934614297?s=46
Standard procedure at V1 is commit to the takeoff and diagnose the problem in-air. Much of your comment is pure speculation until flight data recorders come back, we have no idea what the crew was thinking or what issues they were even aware of.
You're 100% right, and that's exactly what I'm getting at - they hit V1 and were aware they had a serious problem, but couldn't abort.
As far as the rest of my comment - watch the videos that I linked.
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> Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
Let's leave that word to mean what it actually means. Louisville experienced a serious fire.
It's a few blocks of fire. I was on Tanker 4565 standing by as a backfill for units on scene. It's no where near "All of Louisville", that's a ridiculous thing to say.
Not a UPS Factory (whatever that means).
Grade A Auto Parts on Melton Ave was the initial damaged building. I don't have the name of the chemical place handy.
Med Command setup at River City Metals.
It was around 250k gallons of fuel. Our CAD notes on the initial dispatch said 250k, one press briefing said 280k, and then it was changed to 220k which I think is the actual number.
> they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway at ground level
Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this, and breaking failures following landings.
> Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this
Ha, Jeju Air Flight 2216 smashed into a barrier on the second landing attempt in Muan last year [0], and people commented "How could there be a barrier at the end of the runway, so obviously stupid, irresponsible", etc.
Now a plane does not smash into a barrier at the end of the runway and people suggest putting barriers at the end of the runway.
Don't mean to attack parent post, but may I suggest that
a) hordes of experts have thought long and hard about these issues, and it is unlikely that you can encounter this for the first time as a lay person and come up with a solution that has eluded the best engineers for decades ("why don't they attach a parachute to the plane?"), and
b) we are very close to an optimum in commercial aviation, and there are few if any unambiguous ("Pareto") improvements, but rather just tradeoffs. For example: You leave cockpit doors open, terrorists come in and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon. You lock the cockpit doors closed, and suicidal pilots lock out the rest of the crew and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon of mass-murder-suicide.
There are no easy answers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Air_Flight_2216
ETA: In 2007 an A320 overran a runway in Brazil and crashed into a gas station, killing 187 pax & crew + 12 on the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054
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> Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing.
Some do. Here is what it looks like when an overshooting plane utilizes such a barrier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW71FrX8t_g
179 dead.
Consider the possibility that gigantic flying aluminum tubes filled with tons of flammable fuel hurtling around at hundreds of kilometers per hour comprise a dilemma that has no trivial answers. Even defining what "important thing" means at any given instant is not straightforward.
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Unless you have a berm several dozen meters high with a 100 meter base, you ain't stopping something like this from a physics standpoint unfortunately.
Many airports have this problem. The recent korean air disaster which echos this is another example. BTW, this is why most airports, if possible, point out to sea...
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Some runways have been extended with ‘engineered materials’ surfaces, often a form of porous concrete into which an airliner’s wheels will sink, absorbing a lot of energy and arresting the airplane without causing it to break up. It is very effective for landing overruns, but I don’t know about last-seconds aborted takeoffs.
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Security/debris fencing yes, but that's like, orders of magnitude short of what would stop the amount of energy we're talking about here.
You also don't particularly want it to be catastrophically effective as there are real world cases where planes have clipped the fence and then NOT gone on to crash, or at least to crash in a fairly controlled manner with the majority onboard surviving. Hitting a brick wall at 180mph is going to have a 0% survival rate.
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Sorry for ignorance but why is the right thing to continue to take off with an engine on fire?
It depends on whether or not, at the point in which you realize you have an engine on fire, you have room on the runway left to stop.
As I understand it, there is a low speed regime, under 80 knots, where are you stop for basically anything.
Then there is a high speed regime, where you only stop for serious issues, because you now have so much kinetic energy that stopping the plane, while still possible, will involve risk. (i.e. fire from overheated brakes.)
At a certain point, called V1, there’s no longer enough room to stop, no matter what your problem is. You’re either getting airborne or you’re crashing into whatever is ant the end of the runway. In general, getting airborne is the safer option, while obviously still not risk free.
However, this calculation also assumes that the engine fails in an isolated fashion, and its failure did not affect the other engines. If the failure of the left engine threw off debris that damaged the middle engine then we are now talking about a double engine failure. I’m sure the pilots knew there was a problem with the engine when they made the decision to continue, but it’s possible that problems with the middle engine weren’t apparent yet and that it only started to fail once they were committed.
Obviously, this is just speculation, and we will have to wait for the preliminary report at least.
RIP
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V1 is the speed at which you can still stop the plane before the end of the runway. (It is computed for each takeoff based on runway length, aircraft mass, takeoff engine power setting, flaps, wind, runway condition, etc.)
When the plane reaches V1, pilots take the hand off the throttle: they're committed to takeoff, even if an engine fails. It is better to take off and fix the problem or land again, than to smash into whatever is beyond the end of the runway.
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It was at a point where they were going to fast to stop or land safely. At that point you're just trying to pick the best place to crash.
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To avoid mass casualties at the end of the runway - on the road, or the buildings that the runway points to. Check the layout on google maps.
More specifically, V1 is the max speed at which you're about to take off, but you can still abort from. They hit that max speed and realized there was a major problem that hypothetically, they could have slowed down from, but realistically was not possible. They had no choice.
Makes me think of the song "огромное небо" https://youtu.be/0EQNv8L49cs?si=2LTHtiKNvpZVDWVy
Work place related accidents always have a certain tragedy to them. Still remember when in the industrial park, my employer is located in, tanks belonging to a trash incinerator for special chemical waste exploded, taking several people with it.
>> highway and warehouses at the end of the runway
It's astonishing that this is a thing. Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation? I can understand why it can't be retro fitted to existing airports but is it a scenario that's considered at new airports? Just seems like such an absolutely basic safety step.
> Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation?
But that's exactly what a runway is? They're extremely long, have ample safety margins, and have "protected areas" extending out on either end, and outside of that there are regulations about what can and can't be built along the extendend runway centerlines. But jetliners are huge, heavy, fast, and designed to go long distances - the stopping distance of a fully loaded jet at full takeoff speed is measured in miles.
Louisville is a major cargo hub. The airport likely was not built by the warehouses, the warehouses were likely built by the airport.
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Yes, new major airports (rare as they are) do try to acquire large areas of land, larger even than they think they need now, in anticipation of future expansion. However, for scenarios like this, there's limited utility to making the runway longer "just in case." They already pick runway sizes "big enough and then some" as the minimum to even bring planes of each size to an airport. So there is margin.
But no matter the margin, a plane can always crash on the wrong side of any fence. And people will always build right up to wherever you put the fence as closer to the airport is more convenient for everything airport related.
Airports are usually built (originally) out in the boonies away from the major metro area. As time goes by and that land gets more valuable developers grease palms of politicians in land use commissions to allow developments closer and closer to the airports.
Airports also grow themselves. Some municipal airports sited for small aircraft extend their runways to handle larger planes.
It does make me wonder: why are aircraft takeoffs and landings not recorded more often, with higher quality cameras and more angles? If I can watch an NFL replay in 4k a few seconds after the ball is snapped, why not record (and overwrite) all flights that take off and land at every airport?
Like a dash cam, they can save the footage only if there is a problem. Surely that would be much better than splicing together many third party camera recordings.
Most frequently the actions/evidence that lead to a crash would not be captured on airport-located cameras. The holes in the swiss cheese usually start lining up either in the maintenance hangar, en route, or in the briefing room, not on the runway.
The NTSB (and many of their non-US counterparts) are incredibly adept at accident investigation using debris, black boxes and CVRs. Even in cases where the black boxes are damaged and video evidence is available, the video evidence is usually not so helpful as to be able to determine a root cause.
If you take into account that the cameras would be mostly useless in low-light or poor visibility conditions, and the costs associated with maintaining a nationwide network of high-res cameras that cover all runways at all major commercial airports (and ensures their lines of sight and operation through the never-ending renovations going on at these airports), I'm not sure that the benefits of having the cameras make sense.
Because aviation is already incredibly, ridiculously safe compared to essentially every other activity humanity undertakes, and adding additional cost, complexity and expense to the system would produce zero discernible benefit relative to the cost.
Have you seen dash cam footage?
High quality cameras are actually really rare and expensive.
This is probably the worst way a plane could go down. Maximum effect in term of damage. Cargo plane apparently reached V1 (go/no go speed) on the runway, and suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They passed V1, so they knew they were going down. Engine was shedding large debris, including the housing (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.
They were on fire just as they reached V1.
Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway at ground level at 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else.
Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low, they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by then, footage shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.
Plane flipped, continued to smear half of the fuel load for another half a mile.
Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
Footage:
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1985845987684855969?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985849267152699741?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985848132500885995?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985843126934614297?s=46
> They passed V1, so they knew they were going down.
To know this, they would have to know they had lost multiple engines. Clearly this is the case by the end, but it's not clear who realized what at what time.
The NTSB investigation will bring more light.
Agreed, only the NTSB investigation will provide a full account. But if you look at where they were on the runway, they had passed V1.
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From wikipedia, Boeing stopped producing MD-11 since 2,000. Does that mean any MD-11 flying is at least 25 years old? I know 25-year is not particularly old for aircrafts, but MD-11 is not exactly reliable. Is there any reason UPS is flying these planes?
Airframes have a limited lifetime, partially defined by takeoffs and landings (and pressurization cycles). Cargo planes experience fewer cycles than passenger airlines since cargo carriers' aircraft usually only make a one or two flights a day, whereas passenger aircraft a flown back to back as frequently as possible. Historically, cargo carriers would buy used aircraft and convert them, but that's changing.
This particular aircraft was acquired by UPS in 2006 and converted for cargo missions. It was originally delivered as a passenger aircraft to Thai Airways International in 1991. [1] I actually saw this exact aircraft at RDU International in August of this year and took a photo, since tri-engine aircraft in general are not very common these days.
[1]: https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/flight-tracking-news/majo...
The gist is correct, but the subtleties are hiding in the details.
Wide-body (long-haul) airplanes are generally limited by flying hours since they rarely reach their maximum allowed flight cycles.
In contrast, wide-body cargo planes typically fly shorter legs compared to when they are used as passenger carriers. And as a result, they are much more likely to hit their critical cycle limit.
Thanks for the explanation. I'll see if I can find some data on cargo planes.
This really reminded me of a colleague who had a part-time night job flying cancelled checks from Centennial Airport (KAPA, south of Denver) to SLC. A bunch of us went out to lunch on a Friday in December 2005. That night, on his return to KAPA, he crashed his Mitsubishi MU-2 about a mile short of the runway. He and his co-pilot were gone, just like that. On Monday you could see the wreckage and cleanup from our office which was near the airport. It was so surreal.
KAPA is a beautiful airport too, and its restaurant "Perfect Landing" on the second floor is S-tier. I've never heard about this case there, though. Do you have a flight number?
I don't have a flight number, but here's an archived news article of the incident. https://www.deseret.com/2004/12/13/19866420/model-of-plane-t...
Oh I guess it was 2004, not 2005.
Yes, Perfect Landing is a great restaurant!
It looks like they also lost the tail engine in the video. Debris from the left engine probably took it out.
It seems like it happened fairly late in the sequence. Not sure how much of a difference it would have made.
Relative of mine is a real estate agent in the Louisville area. This year she sold two homes to two UPS pilots. One of them, his first day was yesterday. The day of the crash. He was bumped from that very flight.
From my understanding "bumped" means removed? Jesus I wonder how he feels right now. It's like a lottery.
"You take a chance getting up in the morning, crossing the street, or sticking your face in a fan."
- Shirley Jackson
I didn’t realize the MD-11 was still in use. It has had a difficult time in passenger aviation.
Looks really nasty. It seems to have come down in an industrial area, which will significantly reduce casualties. I can’t even imagine this, in a residential area.
I think it's fair to say the MD11 has had a difficult time, but I would caveat that it performs well for an aircraft of its vintage, and is still an acceptably safe aircraft. There have been something in the neighborhood of 2.4 million successful missions completed with the MD11, and around 12 hull losses with fatalities, around 14 hull losses total, over the 35 years the MD11 has been flying. Yes, it's below average compared to modern wide bodies (a330, a350, newer 777/787) which are incredibly (truly incredible to me) safe.
I do expect this incident will accelerate the retirement of the balance of the fleet that is still flying and the MD11 will complete its disappearance from the skies in the US before the end of the decade.
I had just seen and admired a UPS MD-11 making it's climbing turn after takeoff from ONT earlier that day. They are quite capable and a beautiful aircraft.
Happened in the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862
40+ people died in that one, it's a miracle it wasn't more.
[Off-topic] >The police department also urged those in the area to turn off any air intake systems as soon as possible due to the smoke in the area.
Excellent edge-case for IFTTT thermostat. Localized air quality alert --> Intake offline.
LLM reading the news could do this too!
You really want an LLM hallucinating that everything is ok and turning your air back on? Or hallucinating that everything was always ok and not turning your air off in the first place?
Early reports suggest the left engine separated during takeoff after maintenance work earlier that day. It’s a tragic reminder of how even small mechanical issues can turn catastrophic in seconds. Hope the NTSB can clarify what went wrong to prevent future accidents.
Side view https://x.com/TexasHodlerMom/status/1985870817133985970
https://avherald.com/h?article=52f5748f&opt=1
that the engine tore off meakes the likelyhood of significant damage to critical flight control systems quite high, any such damage would have been asymetric and counteracting forces inducing a roll may have been impossible. you know they tried
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Care to link to a source of those reports?
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Zero. This almost certainly has nothing to do with the shutdown.
There's just no way that's actually true though in a complex environment like airports and airplanes.
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Likely no impact. It was departing with ~75 tonnes of fuel and suffered an unrecoverable mechanical failure.
https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/flight-tracking-news/majo...
> suffered an unrecoverable mechanical failure
But was un-discoverable? Or un-preventable? Seems plane inspectors and safety-related roles were affected and have been furloughed:
> But for the people involved in inspecting our planes to ensure they follow Federal Aviation Administration safety standards, the situation is more complicated. While principal aviation inspectors were told to keep working, assistant-level inspectors and other support staff were sent home and then had to be recalled.
https://archive.ph/rEpTx
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You already know the answer. You answered yourself. Yet you ask this and then saying "don't start a flame war" is pretty disingenuous.
"I'm just asking questions."
Asking people not to engage in political discussion after lighting the fuse here is a bit rich.
Another DC-10/MD-11 crash. Does UPS perform their own engine maintenance, or do they outsource the work? What is the effect of the recent layoff of 40,000 and the current cost-cutting project?
The last MD-11 crash with deaths was in 2009 and the last DC-10 kerfuffle was when their unapproved replacement parts fell on the runway and killed the Concorde. I wonder if flight 232 gave them a bad name - everybody seems to know that accident. Looks like have a good record otherwise.
The DC-10 had some significant design flaws at the start.
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Maybe wait with the judgements until the report is in? There are so many possible reasons why this could have happened that have nothing to do with the two items you listed (though it maybe that it does, it is just a bit pointless to assign blame before you know what the cause of the accident was).
I mean the engine is laying on the side of the runway and the plane is seen on fire trying to take off; I'm going to go out on a limb and say maintenance was somehow involved.
Well-maintained planes don't do that.
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Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. It'll take a while before we look at American planes through lenses other than Boeing straight-up lying.
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the fact that stuff like this still happens (despite the relatively low probability/ incident rate) is truly mind boggling. the acceptability threshold for this need to be lower