UPS and FedEx grounding MD-11 planes following deadly Kentucky crash

UPS and FedEx said they are grounding their fleets of McDonnell Douglas MD-11 planes “out of an abundance of caution” following a deadly crash at the UPS global aviation hub in Kentucky.

The crash on Tuesday at UPS Worldport in Louisville killed 14 people, including the three pilots on the MD-11 that was headed for Honolulu.

MD-11 aircrafts make up about 9% of of the UPS airline fleet and 4% of the FedEx fleet, the companies said.

“We made this decision proactively at the recommendation of the aircraft manufacturer,” a UPS statement said late on Friday. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our employees and the communities we serve.”

FedEx said in an email that it will be grounding the aircrafts while it conducts “a thorough safety review based on the recommendation of the manufacturer”.

Boeing, which merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press asking the reasoning behind the recommendation.

Western Global Airlines is the only other US cargo airline that flies MD-11s, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. The airline has 16 MD-11s in its fleet but 12 of them have already been put in storage. The company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment early on Saturday.

Boeing announced in 1998 that it would be phasing out its MD-11 jetliner production, with final deliveries due in 2000.

The UPS cargo plane, built in 1991, was nearly airborne on Tuesday when a bell sounded in the cockpit, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said earlier on Friday. For the next 25 seconds, the bell rang and the pilots tried to control the aircraft as it barely lifted off the runway, its left wing ablaze and missing an engine, and then ploughed into the ground in a spectacular fireball.

The cockpit voice recorder captured the bell, which sounded about 37 seconds after the crew called for take-off thrust, Mr Inman said.

There are different types of alarms with varying meanings, he said, and investigators have not determined why the bell rang, though they know the left wing was burning and the engine on that side had detached.

Mr Inman said it would be months before a transcript of the cockpit recording is made public as part of that investigation process.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said the bell likely was signalling the engine fire.

Dramatic video captured the aircraft crashing into businesses and erupting in a fireball.

Flight records suggest the UPS MD-11 that crashed underwent maintenance while it was on the ground in San Antonio for more than a month until mid-October. It is not clear what work was done.

The UPS package handling facility in Louisville is the company’s largest. The hub employs more than 20,000 people in the region, handles 300 flights daily and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.

UPS Worldport operations resumed on Wednesday night with its Next Day Air, or night sort, operation, spokesman Jim Mayer said.