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.
UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
171–180 of 469 posts
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know, that looks like a lot more than just a stall. There was a ton of flame that looked like it was coming out of the front or top of the engine, rather than just something shooting out the back.
I think you're looking at the left wing (number 1) engine; GP is talking about either the tail or right wing engine. (I think tail is number 2 on MD-11.) There's a brief explosion visible through the smoke at about 1-2 seconds in, to the right of the engine visibly on fire; that's probably what he's talking about. Freeze frame: https://imgur.com/a/c3h8Qd3
Agree, looks like an engine disruption.
The rotation already exacerbates the flow into that engine. Change in flow geometry gets more smoke in its way when it's already eating turbulent air.
We don't know if it just had a disruption or a full-blown stall, but give the way it made it to takeoff speed and then just gave out, stall seems likely.
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#173Video 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-…
An accident on takeoff means full tanks - some 38000 gallons(?) spread along the site like a napalm strike.
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview mirrors would be helpful. Helpful in what way? What are the pilots going to do with the information?
They won't have to rely on cabin crew description of what they see over the wings or have to send one of the pilots to take a look (see UA1175).
Sure, but in this situation there is zero time for any of that.
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is some margin in the calculations. But the training is very very clear, before V1 you must abort and after V1 you must continue. No discussion, no decision to make. You call V1, hands go off the throttles and no matter what you're going to fly. The margin is for example that the plane must not just be able to fly, but also reach a minimum climb gradient to clear obstacles with a bit of safety margin. There is…
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Nothing about it reads as AI to me. I'm not even the commenter and I take offense when people suggest that knowledgeable, helpful HN comments are AI.
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
The DC-10 had some significant design flaws at the start.
e.g. https://mondortiz.com/the-problematic-cargo-door-of-the-doug...
The DC-10 was a rushed programme to avoid Douglas being frozen out of the 1970s widebody market by Lockheed and Boeing.
Similarly, the MD-11 was a cost-restricted update of the airframe to avoid McD being frozen out of the 1990s widebody market by Airbus and Boeing.
McD management wouldn't fund the more ambitious four-engined MD-12, so the trijet's fuselage was stretched and aerodynamic tweaks applied.
The MD-11 never met its performance targets and heralded the end of the Douglas commercial line. It was fairly quickly relegated from pax to cargo service where it has a good payload but little else to commend it.
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
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.
Which was a tradition that started at McDonnell-Douglas, who then became Boeing’s management post-merger.
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-…
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.
The pollution and noise probably has health effects many times more significant than the sum of extremely rare crashes like these.
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
They won't have to rely on cabin crew description of what they see over the wings or have to send one of the pilots to take a look (see UA1175).
its super weird to me this isn't a thing, and there's resistence to the idea. I mean, if they are already masters at glacing at 100000 differnent indicators and warning messages etc. and processing them at super speeds (they really do!) then i'd say a monitor with a bunch of buttons below it to switch feeds (maybe a little more elaborate, but not tooo...) would be helpful. the problem might be getting trained and exp…
Pilots are already overloaded so we can probably overload them a little more?
Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has been at least one crash due to manufacturing defects that no one knew about beforehand or could therefore diagnose. We will find out what happened in about a year once the investigation is complete.
Phase of flight is a major contributor to accident statistics with take-off and landing much more often associated with accidents than the rest of the flight. Take-off asks a lot from the engines, and one nasty bit about manufacturing defects is that they can take a while to show up, but the bulk of them usually surfaces when the aircraft are relatively new. But: this plane was delayed before the flight due to mainte…
Luckily for me and everyone, I'm not an NTSB investigator, and will probably forget about this before the report is issued :)