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UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

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Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#181

Post by wlesieutre »

imglorp wrote: post #173
justsid wrote: post #4

Earlier 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-…

An accident on takeoff means full tanks - some 38000 gallons(?) spread along the site like a napalm strike.

A particularly large amount of fuel because it was flying to Honolulu

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#182

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

positron26 wrote: post #52
octaane wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There is a dead zone between rejection and successful take-off speeds. We see it hit too often. I think pilot training is playing a factor. A normal rotation kills too much energy. One engine can climb when you have some airspeed and get clean, but if you lose too much energy on rotation, the inefficiency of the AoA for the rest of the short flight means that engine can no longer buy you any up. I've seen too many si…

Increased thrust requirements for airliners that force planes to hit an increased v1 (or whatever it's called) sooner on the runway to allow for more time to reject takeoff.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#183

Post by panxyh »

crazygringo wrote: post #175
panxyh wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

I see now that it probably wasn't, but "nothing" is an overstatement.

And knowledgeable and helpful responses can be AI, so there might be a fallacy somewhere in your offence-taking. Are you offended when people do that in general, or only when they are wrong?

I do appreciate the effort put into writing a good comment.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#184

Post by Retric »

potato3732842 wrote: post #155
JCM9 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can always come up with some pretext to justify things by ignoring the other side of the equation. How many lives do the man hours spent commuting, or toiling away to afford higher rents waste? IDK how the math pencils out, but an attempt ought to be made before drawing conclusions.

None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing. The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water often by building airports on reclaimed land.

What generally gets areas in trouble is locations that used to be a good get worse as aircraft get larger and the surroundings get built up. The solution is to send larger airplanes to a new airport, but it’s not free and there’s no clear line when things get unacceptably dangerous.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#186

Post by fullstop »

amelius wrote: post #147
linehedonist wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One improvement is a bed of concrete at the end of the runway that will catch the wheels and slow an airplane down to a stop. Pretty much everyone agrees it’s a good idea but it’s not always possible due to space needs or cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...

Also put the fire department right next to it. Or some kind of automated extinguisher.

There was a young girl who survived the crash of Asiana flight 214, but was run over by a firetruck because she was covered in extinguisher foam.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#187

Post by gwbas1c »

Retric wrote: post #184
potato3732842 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always come up with some pretext to justify things by ignoring the other side of the equation. How many lives do the man hours spent commuting, or toiling away to afford higher rents waste? IDK how the math pencils out, but an attempt ought to be made before drawing conclusions.

None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing. The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water often by building airports on reclaimed land. What generally gets areas in trouble is locations that used to be a good get worse as aircraft get larger and the surroundings get built up. The solution is to send larger airplanes…

> The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water.

That works in costal areas, but not inland.

There's no large body of water near the Louisville airport.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#188

Post by Arainach »

Retric wrote: post #184
potato3732842 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always come up with some pretext to justify things by ignoring the other side of the equation. How many lives do the man hours spent commuting, or toiling away to afford higher rents waste? IDK how the math pencils out, but an attempt ought to be made before drawing conclusions.

None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing. The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water often by building airports on reclaimed land. What generally gets areas in trouble is locations that used to be a good get worse as aircraft get larger and the surroundings get built up. The solution is to send larger airplanes…

>None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_International_Airport

It's hard to project growth. Things build right up to the limit of the airport for convenient access, then the area grows and the airport needs to grow - and what do you do? Seattle-Tacoma is critically undersized for the traffic it gets and has been struggling with the fact that there's physically nowhere to expand to.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#189

Post by akerl_ »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #160
mrb wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indic…

(asked earnestly out of lack of familiarity with this field) Are maintenance/certification standards distinct between passenger and cargo carriers?

It's hard for me to tell if this suggests a step backwards in application of the reforms instigated after AA191 or that those reforms were never copied over to cargo aviation.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#190

Post by pixl97 »

avalys wrote: post #12
Jtsummers wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Every multi-engine airliner is designed to be able to take off safely even if an engine fails at a critical moment. What might have happened in this case is that the mechanism of failure of one engine caused damaged or interfered with the operation of another engine (via smoke, debris, etc.), and taking off with two engines degraded is not part of the design criteria.

I do think 'engine fails' and 'engine has left the building' are two different categories of problems. Even if the rear engine was working I'm going to assume this craft would have crashed, probably just farther down range.
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