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UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

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Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#211

Post by noer »

akerl_ wrote: post #189
stevenjgarner wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but mostly related to purpose specific things: passenger carriers have additional safety checks for cabin things like seats, oxygen and evacuation systems. Cargo carriers have additional safety checks for things like cargo restraint and decompression systems.

Furthermore (and I don't know if this is related to the cause of this crash), cargo jets tend to be older/refurbished passenger planes that have outlived their useful lives flying passengers.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#212

Post by Retric »

nostrademons wrote: post #202
Retric wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

San Jose does. You can, in theory, walk to downtown from the airport; it's about an hour and a half via pedestrian trail: https://maps.app.goo.gl/zhZdA5tWGAKunM2e8 (This is widely considered a misfeature of San Jose - it limits the height of buildings in downtown San Jose to 10 stories because the downtown is directly under the flight path of arriving flights, it limits runway length and airport expansion, and it mea…

There’s roughly a mile of roads, green spaces, and river between the airport and downtown San Jose which an absolutely identical accident would impact. It’s not very wide, but pilots aren’t going to aim for buildings if they can help it.

So while downtown being in the flight path is a risk there was some method to the madness which caused that alignment.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#213

Post by conradev »

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…

worth noting about AA191:

  With a total of 273 fatalities, the disaster is the deadliest aviation accident to have occurred in the United States.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#214

Post by dmd »

sys32768 wrote: post #208

In 1986, I lived a mile or so from where a mid-air collision sent a DC-9 crashing into a neighborhood, which killed 15 people on the ground: https://www.presstelegram.com/2016/08/30/cerritos-plane-cras... Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane crash.

> Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house

To be fair, statistically, your living room is far more dangerous than the cabin of an airplane.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#215

Post by daemonologist »

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…

To expand on #2, the loss of hydraulic pressure also caused the uncommanded retraction of the leading edge slats on the left wing, which was found by the NTSB to be part of the probable cause. Full report is here (PDF): https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

(I do not mean to imply that this exact slat retraction is necessarily relevant in the Louisville crash, however - I believe aircraft since AA191 are designed to maintain their wing configuration after loss of hydraulic pressure.)

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#216

Post by mschuster91 »

rkomorn wrote: post #209
mschuster91 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections Foreign Repair Stations date back to the 90s [1], the thing is they need to be supervised by an FAA Certified Mechanic. Inspection of these was already a hot issue in the early '00s... No one gave a fuck, it was all about saving costs for a very long time. The linked 2007 rep…

> IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO for 70$, that's not sustainable. Are you saying higher prices would lead to better safety? If so, I think it's optimistic to assume that would be the result, rather than just more profits. I'm all for tighter regulations and enforcement on safe…

> Are you saying higher prices would lead to better safety?

Higher prices and regulations.

With no floor on pricing, there will always be enough greedy executives who are willing to cut corners to make money in a ruthlessly competitive environment, fully knowing that it is very hard to prosecute a C-level executive personally.

The other possible result will be that eventually the market "agrees upon" a minimum price floor while being in compliance to regulations - but that usually means that the company will be as bare-stripped of assets and reserves as possible, which means in turn that the slightest external shock can (and will) send not just one but multiple companies crashing down hard. We've seen this with Covid - an economy that has optimized itself for decades on running as lean as possible is very sensitive to all sorts of external interruptions. Of course, that's not directly relevant to safety... but indirectly it is, as the inevitable result of that is an oligo-, duo- or monopoly and then, we've seen with Boeing where that ends, incentives aligned too much to cut corners.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#217

Post by coddingtonbear »

dmd wrote: post #214
sys32768 wrote: post #208

In 1986, I lived a mile or so from where a mid-air collision sent a DC-9 crashing into a neighborhood, which killed 15 people on the ground: https://www.presstelegram.com/2016/08/30/cerritos-plane-cras... Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane crash.

> Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house To be fair, statistically, your living room is far more dangerous than the cabin of an airplane.

Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in it?

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#218

Post by tonmoy »

haunter wrote: post #2

Video 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

From what I read they engine caught fire right after they hit V1, so basically the only option was to take off and solve the problem in the air

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#219

Post by dmd »

coddingtonbear wrote: post #217
dmd wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house To be fair, statistically, your living room is far more dangerous than the cabin of an airplane.

Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in it?

Given an hour spent flying in a commercial US-flagged airliner or an hour spent in your living room, and you're (far) more likely to get hurt or die in your living room.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#220

Post by flobosg »

coddingtonbear wrote: post #217
dmd wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house To be fair, statistically, your living room is far more dangerous than the cabin of an airplane.

Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in it?

> by what possible metric

Micromorts, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

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