Those of y'all that know me know that I am in the aviation business as a chemtrail technician, and I was a Atlanta Assembly Ford Motor Company employee, if I had stayed with Ford, I would have transferred to Louisville Assembly or Kentucky Truck. A lot of my Ford peeps filled the Atlanta Assembly farcebook feed with pics of the smoke and flames, apparently it wasn't far from the assembly plant. My heart goes out to the families involved, and being in the aviation field, I keep wondering if it was a fatigue cracks around the engine mounts. That is what happened to the "El Al Flight 1862" I figure that the FAA will ground all MD11 variants until they inspect all engine mounts. Just a guess on my part mind you.
More information will come out in the coming days.
The UPS Boeing MD-11 that crashed while taking off from Louisville International Airport Nov. 4 lost its No. 1 engine before the aircraft cleared the airport perimeter, the NTSB said in its first briefing on the accident.
“We have viewed airport CCTV security coverage, which shows the left engine detaching from the wing during the takeoff roll,” NTSB Board Member Todd Inman told reporters during a Nov. 5 briefing.
Photos of the airfield taken after the accident scene show what appear to be a heavily damaged GE Aerospace CF6-80C2 engine. Parts of the nacelle, including the inlet and fan cowl, are also visible in photos and appear to have detached during the accident sequence.
“We do believe that that is the engine from the left side of the plane,” Inman said. “It is actually on the airfield, so it’s not off the airport property.”
The engine appears to have come to rest on the right side of Runway 17 Right (17R), the aircraft’s departure runway, and an adjacent taxiway. The engine is about 8,700 ft. from the Runway 17R departure end, Aviation Week analysis of publicly shared images show.
“That correlates with the video that we’ve seen of it detaching from the airplane while it is in flight,” Inman added. “We also know that fire was occurring during that time, so we’re analyzing that.”
Security footage and witness videos show the aircraft, Flight 2976 en route to Honolulu, on fire as it accelerated down Louisville’s Runway 17 Right (17R). As the aircraft rotated, fire is seen streaming over the freighter’s left wing, from the engine location to the fuselage.
The aircraft “lifted off and gained enough altitude to clear the fence at the end of Runway 17R,’ Inman said. “Shortly after clearing that fence, it made impact with structures and the terrain off of the airport.”
A large fire ensued, destroying most of the fuselage and damaging several buildings. Inman estimated the off-airport accident scene covers about 0.5 mi.
Officials confirmed nine fatalities and 15 injuries but have not provided details. Three crew members were onboard the MD-11. Local reports count the UPS pilots among the fatalities, but officials had not confirmed this as of late Nov. 4.
While investigators acknowledge the No. 1 engine separation, they have not revealed any facts that would explain the sequence of events. Still unclear is the extent of any engine failure and if either of the trijet’s other two engines were affected.
The NTSB expects to glean key details from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders in the coming days. Both devices have been located and are expected to be transported to the NTSB’s lab in Washington, D.C., as soon as possible. The devices “suffered some heat [damage],” Inman said, adding it was not “intrusion, but heat around” the devices. “These recorders are built for that,” he continued.
“We feel comfortable once we get these to our lab in D.C., that we will be able to get a good readout of the applicable data,” he added.
A 28-person NTSB team traveled to Louisville to conduct the probe’s on-site phase. Chihoon Shin is serving as the board’s investigator in charge. The on-site portion of the probe is expected to last about a week, Inman said.
The board is gathering recent history of the airframe involved, including engine-related maintenance work. Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization data shows the aircraft, which carried registration N259UP and was McDonnell Douglas serial no. 48417 and line no. 467, was on the ground in San Antonio from Sept. 3 to Oct. 19. It is not clear whether the aircraft or its engines were undergoing maintenance.
FlightAware data show the aircraft operated 28 cycles between its maintenance visit and the fatal accident.
The 34-year old airframe was delivered to Thai Airways in July 1991 as a passenger aircraft, Aviation Week Fleet Discovery data shows. UPS acquired it in 2006. The most recent flight data show the aircraft had 58,584 hours and 10,597 cycles.
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