Thoughts on the UPS Crash.
UPDATE: November 16, 2025
Investigators are looking into the possibility that a structural failure — a fracture in the pylon that connects the engine to the wing — may have caused the engine separation that struck UPS fight 2976 on November 4th.
Shortly after the accident, the FAA grounded all MD-11 jetliners. This weekend they extended that emergency order to all remaining DC-10 jets. The MD-11 is a derivative of the DC-10 and shares many structural components.
Very few DC-10s remain active. Fewer than ten survive, used as freighters or as specialty firefighting planes.
In 1979 the FAA grounded all U.S.-registered DC-10s, and banned the plane from U.S. airspace, following the horrific crash of American Airlines flight 191 in Chicago (see below). Then, as now, the culprit was engine pylons. Airline maintenance procedures were blamed for causing cracks, but investigators criticized the pylon design as well. Did this issue rear its head again, all these decades later, in Louisville?
The poor DC-10 was beset by a slew of design shortfalls that contributed to several accidents. Cargo doors, floors, hydraulics, pylons. The Chicago disaster killed 273 people. Five years earlier, a faulty cargo door led to the crash of a Turkish Airlines flight outside Paris, in which 346 were killed.
So far as I know, the DC-10 becomes the only commercial jet to be grounded twice. A jinxed machine that can’t escape its fate. Here it is, with only the tiniest number still in service, yet its bad luck continues.
November 6, 2025
You’ve all seen the footage by now. Late on Tuesday afternoon, a UPS MD-11 freighter crashed off the runway in Louisville, Kentucky, erupting into a wall of fire. All three pilots perished, as did several people on the ground.
For reasons unclear, the left-side engine of the three-engine widebody jet separated from the wing before liftoff. Beyond that, there’s not a lot we know.
A commercial jet is, by regulation, able to safely take off and climb with a failed or detached engine. That doesn’t guarantee success, however. Everything must be done right, procedurally. It’s something pilots train for all the time, but when you’ve got a widebody jet at max takeoff weight, there’s nothing easy about it.
And there was more going on. From the video, it appears that the left wing was on fire. It’s possible the wing, or its critical control surfaces (flaps and slats), were damaged.
We can’t help thinking of American Airlines flight 191, a DC-10 that lost its left engine on liftoff at Chicago in 1979. The engine rolled over the top of the wing and tore out hydraulic lines, causing the flaps and slats on that side to retract. These devices are crucial for maintaining lift at low speeds. Without them, the wing stalled; the plane rolled over and crashed into a fireball killing 273 people. Indeed, the sequence that befell AA 191 isn’t at all unlike the one in Louisville.
It’s also possible that the MD-11’s center engine, located at the base of the tail, may have ingested debris or hot gasses from the wing fire, causing that engine to suffer a power loss, or fail completely, as well. A jet can take off with a lost engine. It cannot take off with two lost engines.
This brings to mind the Concorde disaster at Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2000. With one engine already failed, a wing fire fed by leaking fuel caused the adjacent engine to quit as well.
A derivative of the star-crossed DC-10, the MD-11 was developed by McDonnell Douglas in the late 1980s. It didn’t sell particularly well. Long since retired from passenger service, a few remain in service as freighters, mostly with UPS and FedEx. The plane has a reputation for being difficult to handle in certain situations, such as when landing in gusty winds. MD-11s were involved in at least three landing rollovers. Whether or how its characteristics played a role in Tuesday’s disaster is unknown. It’s not likely.
At least four different videos of the MD-11 crash have been making the media rounds, each of them pretty gruesome. In the old days it was rare for crashes to be caught on film, be it photographs or video. Someone had to have a camera handy at exactly the right second. The few that were captured became iconic images, such as the photo of the PSA 727 in San Diego in 1978, its wing afire after colliding with a Cessna, and the aforementioned DC-10 at Chicago, rolled onto its side and out of control.
Nowadays, with cameras everywhere and a public starving for sensational images, a plane goes down and the footage is bouncing around social media within minutes.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Photo by Lukas Souza, courtesy of Unsplash.
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19 Responses to “Thoughts on the UPS Crash.”
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Kyra says “Not so fast, buster!”
“Why You’ve Never Been In A Plane Crash” Asterisk Magazine February 2024
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/why-you-ve-never-been-in-a-plane-crash
“‘the DC-10 becomes the only commercial jet to be grounded twice’
What about the 737-MAX?”
The MAX was grounded once, and in my opinion, the reasons for its grounding were political, not technical.
The two high-profile accidents involving the MAX were the result of some airmen’s over-reliance on cockpit automation (MCAS, in this case), and not knowing what to do when the automation misbehaved. For what it’s worth, cockpit automation misbehavior cause a high-profile Airbus accident in Germany—“flight laws” interfered with the captain’s ability to control his aircraft. Yet that series wasn’t grounded.
The DC-10/MD-11 accidents were the result of design decisions that were related to cost.
There has never been any question about the 737’s airframe design, especially in how the engine pylons are attached to the wings (the Alaska Airlines door plug ejection was attributed to faulty assembly, not a design defect). There was also never any doubts about the reliability of the 737’s slat actuation mechanism. Furthermore, I am not aware of any incident in which a 737’s cargo bay door failed in flight. Such failures have repeatedly occurred with the DC-10/MD-11 series, causing great loss of life and property damage.
“…with cameras everywhere and a public starving for sensational images…I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
In the world of aviation accidents, coincidental video is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is in the preservation of crucial evidence that helps investigators determine what led to the accident.
The curse is every armchair aviation expert with an Internet connection is spouting theories about what led to the accident, same as what’s happened with the Air India crash.
That the UPS flight’s final seconds were preserved on video has considerably helped the NTSB in their investigation. Frame grabs from the video captured at the moment the MD-11F lifted off clearly show the failure sequence that to the loss of the plane and its crew.
As much as video helps to answer some questions, it also raises others. Was the loss of the #1 engine and pylon assembly due to an innate design defect of the DC-10/MD-11 pylon attachment structure? Or was it another case of improper maintenance, as with AA 191? How did the loss of #1 cause #3 to develop a compressor stall? Did #2 ingest debris and/or combustion gases from #1 and fail as well? Did the left-wing slats stay deployed following the separation of the pylon?
I wish the NTSB much success in conclusively determining a probable cause. I am also very sorry for the families of the victims, and especially sorry for the MD-11’s crew, who were put into a truly hopeless situation. May God rest their souls.
“the DC-10 becomes the only commercial jet to be grounded twice”
What about the 737-MAX?
Another horrendous crash and my thoughts and condolences to all families who lost loved ones in this incident
My thoughts on this incident bring me to the conclusion that this is the end of the road for all of these aircraft.
All of these aircraft ( tail engine type)should be grounded permanent it appears there is a major problem now with 4 bolts ???? holding on the engine to the pylon/wing for the wing mounted engines.
Any safety modification’s must surely not be cost effective and would need to be proved to be the answer to the problem and pass a further air worthiness inspection ????
Also this incident we could all say with our voices raised saying ‘It must never happen again with this aircraft’ but it has happened before in the past.
To restore pilot and public confidence in the air worthiness of all aircraft this model/type of aeroplane should be withdrawn from service.
We owe it to the families of all who have lost loved ones in the air and on the ground a line must be drawn and we have reached that point.
Preliminary report is out. It leads with a six part photo montage screengrab of the plane’s rotation, where #1 engine immediately detaches from wing flips up in front of wing while wing erupts in flame, then #1 engine rockets over the fuselage to other side of plane like a firework gone wrong.
So yes, engine #1 had ample opportunity to spew debris into engine #2’s intake, plus superheated gas and/or flame which alone might have been enough to make #2 sputter and choke at a flight-critical time.
I’m not going to link to it because to put it bluntly, it’s disturbing. I will note that there are no MD11s or DC10s in passenger service these days (outside of possibly russia), and I salute the pilots for keeping wings level on their doomed plane for as long as they did.
Both the MD11 and precedecessor DC10 remain grounded, likely the FAA is figuring out precisely what engine pylon inspection regime needs to be instituted.
Back in the late 1980s I was working as administrative assistant for an organization that was putting on a conference in Washington DC. I had to arrange the travel for all of the board members from around the country. One of them was absolutely adamant that he was not to travel on a DC 10. This was 10 years after that American crash in 1979. United Airlines was still flying a lot of them at the time and they are huge in Chicago but that’s what he wanted so that that’s what he got.
When I flew for American Eagle in the late 80s I used to commute MIA-LAX on American’s DC10s. I loved it – always got first class. Later, when I worked for Northwest Airlink I used to jumpseat on NWA DC10s,BOS-MSP, to see my (soon to be ex) wife and I loved the cockpit. The L1011 was a better airplane but I always liked the 10s.
Adding to the bad juju of the DC-10, it was also a contributing factor in the Concorde’s demise in Paris, and ultimately, everywhere else.
Concorde’s fire was due to leaking fuel, which was due to a fuel tank rupture, which was due to a pressure wave which was due to a tire’s impact on the wing, which was due to a tire shredding at takeoff speeds, which was due to running over a piece of metal on the runway which detached from the preceding aircraft – a DC-10 bound for the US.
DC10 now grounded too. FAA seems to be really unhappy with trimotor configurations having two wing engines and one tail engine. Took them this long to figure it out?
Then there’s the F-15D that landed with most of one wing missing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxJcEz3h4tU&t=225s
1 engine out, yes plane should still fly and climb out. 2 of 3 engines out, no. What appears to have happened here is a cascade failure, where engine #1 failed in such a way that it took out a second engine, coincidentally the #2 engine. That is not supposed to happen and is unacceptable, thus the grounding of the MD11. BTW, that grounding is now an FAA directive applying to all operators’ MD11s. There are a couple in russia, I suppose those might keep flying.
Hoping the preliminary accident investigation report sheds some light on the reasons for the grounding, though that is not required.
“A commercial jet is, by regulation, able to safely take off and climb with a failed or detached engine.”
A failed engine – absolutely. Professional pilots can handle that. Private pilots maybe not so much.
A detached engine? Really?
Has there ever been an incident where an engine separated from an airplane during take off, and the plane did not crash?
Aerodynamically, provided there’s no additional damage to the wing or aiframe, flying with a detached engine is considerably EASIER than flying with one that’s simply failed. A failed engine results in lots of additional drag. With a detached engine, there’s no drag at all.
And yes, there have been a number of cases of engines separating from the plane with no dire consequences.
UPS and fedex have grounded their MD11s, at Boeing’s “recommendation” and “out of an abundance of caution”. That’s 27 of 292 planes for UPS, and 26/317 for fedex. Interesting that they’re grounding on the basis of airframe, not engine.
Somewhere in some spreadsheets it’s still profitable to fly these old and poor designs. 200+ lives we cannot risk, but 3 lives is a risk we’re willing to take.
Not sure if it was the case here but it seems there is a shortcut maintenance procedure for removing and installing the engine that takes much less time. Involving visual alignments by a forklift operator??
I’m sure there are very detailed procedures for monitoring and ensuring safety, but as 737 MAX showed, lots of room for mischief by design.
They’ve recovered the FDR and CVR and report successful extraction of the data. I’ll predict we get a preminary crash report within 7-10 days, which will at least disambiguate sequence of events.
Re your comment on the UPS crash: you should be very disappointed with the people and $ that the views garnered. The FAA and NTSB should get the best films of the accident, and other outlets and individuals should NOT show it, IMHO.
RE: Proliferation of camera footages of recent crashes, especially those happening near airports (Jeju Air, American Eagle, Air India, UPS), they are valuable to some extent for investigative purposes,in establishing an unequivocal sequence of events leading up to the catastrophe. But also gave rise to sensationalist tweets or even worse, “death porn”. Does anyone know if or not airports have CCTV footage for all takeoffs and landings, given video quality and data storage advances over the last several decades. And if not, why not?