A United Parcel Service (UPS) MD11 cargo flight departing Louisville KY for Hawaii crashed soon after takeoff. Crew and a few on ground are known to have died. Early information is that one of engines separated from the airplane. Later analyses are sure to examine UPS maintenance procedures. Current govt shutdown has crimped air traffic control staffing, we can expect connections to be suggested. But I think this is not related to that.
Concur. I was working in my elections side-hustle at the time, when the story broke, and it looked like an uncased engine failure or similar event after V1. We will know 'all of the things' in due time.
Reddit has had a good discussion with pilots on V1 and how it's the absolute worst moment for engine problems because you can no longer abort the take off and your plane is fully loaded with fuel. Evidently the plane was taking packages to Hawaii so it had full tanks. My friend who works in a hotel in downtown Louisville heard the explosion and everyone was ordered to shelter in place for a little while.
My first thought, I have to admit, makes me feel as if I am a total %&*@!, as I sort of thought, good thing I don't have anything coming UPS. A moment later I thought what I jerk I was....not even thinking about the people killed and hurt.
The way you senselessly mass murder yellow Jackets every Summer for no good reason has already established your no good total %&*@! reputation long ago.
Of about 200 MD11s that entered service, none are now pax haulers. About 70 are in active cargo service and about 50 are in short-term storage (by same haulers) for some reason(s). I suppose all of those will be getting close examination on the ground in near future. I is also possible that all UPS maintenance work will be given additional scrutiny regardless of airframe.
We all think without "thinking" sometimes. You immediately recognized it. I would say you are good. Always thought "there, but for the grace of God..." falls into a strange philosophical hole also. And if there has been anyone thinking about God and grace and chance and circumstance for the past half-decade it has been me. But, back to subject at hand... kris
These are old planes and old engines; combined with the fact that there's a race to the bottom where maintenance cost is a concern. It's an easy way to trim cost and expand profit margins. People signing-off on maintenance that may have been performed or could have been performed improperly or questionable cheap 3nd party refurbished/rebuilt parts. Remember a few years ago, when tires were literally falling off planes. That was clearly maintenance oversight - especially happening on different planes with different airlines; twice in one month. That shouldn't have happened in the first place. That door plug issue, where Boeing itself didn't do a proper QC - because fasteners were missing. Just my 2 cents......
Louisville KY is UPS hub with 300 flights per day (according to recent media). Some may have more distant destinations than Honolulu, thus with larger fuel loads, but probably not many. So this may be near max possible single plane crash in cargo biz. MD11 as all now know has 3 engines in the tail. Engine 'departure' is likely to have done damage to flight control surfaces there. If black boxes (also in tail) survived the cook, that will show them to be very sturdy.
... also didn't follow proper procedure for work on that door, and didn't fill out the required paperwork. And the fuselage supplier (since acquired by Boeing in order to gain increased control) didn't finish the necessary work on it before shipping the assembly, necessitating the re-work after arriving at the Boeing Renton plant. So not a single failure, but multiple overlapping failures. FAA review found lots more similar procedural problems.
This is what makes these types of "accidents" so scary. Systems like these has built-in, engineered redundancies; ditto with maintenance on such systems - so that a single point of failure doesn't cause catastrophes. This indicates a total break-down of the safety systems in place to prevent these types of "accidents" from happening in the first place. Pointing fingers and saying "that's not my job or responsibility" just doesn't cut it; but it seems to be an 'acceptable excuse' in today's world.
Yep my first thought was about cargo shift. Even though I flew as a Special Operations (intel) analyst, I had lots of crewmaster training so know how to secure down everything....from huge (96-inch high) pallets to Hummies to pallets of fuel. (Had to wear oxygen masks the entire flight when we had fuel bladders...that always sucked.) But, yeah, the left engine coming off during takeoff is very rare. Yes, the aircraft can fly on one engine BUT there's shared systems (hydraulics, fuel, etc.) on both engines. Plus, it takes time to rev up an engine and it appears they were trying to get her more power but failed. Dang, the engine that fell off was on the runway....I've never heard of this happening, ever! All around a very tragic, and sad, accident....will be interesting to see what the NTSB determines but they are very thorough so will be months to find out.
This was an MD-11, a tri-jet, not a twin-jet. Indications are that debris from the left engine was ingested by the middle engine, causing problems with it too. Can any tri-jet continue take-off on a single engine? I doubt it. I'm quickly remembering at least two infamous incidents where passenger jets suffered detached engines during takeoff, causing fatal crashes. IIRC (haven't looked up yet to confirm details) a DC-10 tri-jet at Chicago, were a rear mounting bolt failed due to improper maintenance practices, causing the engine to swing forward up and over the wing, breaking hydraulic lines. The pilot couldn't see the full situation, did exactly what he was trained to do for an engine quitting, but that turned out to be the wrong thing for the additional damage he couldn't know about. And a 747 in Europe where an inboard engine seized, broke off its mount and collided with the outboard engine, breaking it off too. Aren't the engines already pretty well spun up during takeoff? Or are they commonly at lower power during 'normal' takeoffs? Flying out of Paro, Bhutan, in very heavy rain a week ago -- elevation 7330 feet and deep in a tight valley surrounded by tall mountains -- the engines were spun up hard with the brakes set, released only after I was seeing a huge water spray behind the engines. It is a bit nerve wracking to land and take off at this airport, looking out the window and seeing the adjacent ridges so close. This pic is from the internet, not my own:
Same way government works too... Last time we had a criminal leading the country a million US citizens died of a global pandemic while we were all gaslighted and told preventing the seriousness of infection was a conspiracy to take away our freedom and we learned about super spreader events and full pardons for thousands in a violent mob that took over the halls of congress to prevent the truth of free and fair elections.
A retired NTSB investigator explained the team will be searching for evidence of an engine failure that caused parts of the engine to destroy fuel lines in ways that could not be contained. And while planes can lose one engine and fly on the other one, evidently a fully loaded plane of that type just after V1 can not do so.
This was a tri-jet, not a twin. And there are indications the center engine may have suffered collateral damage, leaving only one out of three engines fully working.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that was immaterial, since that engine dropped out and likely took a lot of control & mechanical mechanisms with it. There wasn't enough time or altitude to switch to backup systems - since it was fueled up for a trip to Hawaii.
According to my past fellow engineers who previously worked at a local airplane maker, any passenger jet should be certified to suffer a single contained engine failure at any point during the takeoff process, and either (1) abort takeoff and brake safely on the remaining runway, or (2) continue the takeoff on the remaining engine(s). Overloading the plane will violate these requirements. Also, engine pylons and mounts are supposed snap off if the high RPM turbines suddenly seize, dropping the engine without disabling the controls. The MD-11 was originally built as a passenger airliner, these cargo versions should meet the same rules. Watching the videos, this engine failure appears to have been uncontained, causing other damage.
