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- Hacker News
- Relative of mine is a real estate agent in the Louisville area. This year she sold two homes to two UPS pilots. One of them, his first day was yesterday. The day of the crash. He was bumped from that very flight.by usermac
- From my understanding "bumped" means removed? Jesus I wonder how he feels right now. It's like a lottery.by ferguess_k
- [Off-topic] >The police department also urged those in the area to turn off any air intake systems as soon as possible due to the smoke in the area.
Excellent edge-case for IFTTT thermostat. Localized air quality alert --> Intake offline.
by 1970-01-01 - LLM reading the news could do this too!by hshdhdhehd
- From wikipedia, Boeing stopped producing MD-11 since 2,000. Does that mean any MD-11 flying is at least 25 years old? I know 25-year is not particularly old for aircrafts, but MD-11 is not exactly reliable. Is there any reason UPS is flying these planes?by ferguess_k
- Airframes have a limited lifetime, partially defined by takeoffs and landings (and pressurization cycles). Cargo planes experience fewer cycles than passenger airlines since cargo carriers' aircraft usually only make a one or two flights a day, whereas passenger aircraft a flown back to back as frequently as possible. Historically, cargo carriers would buy used aircraft and convert them, but that's changing.by geoffeg
- > Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the engine #1 separated during the takeoff run
Some people are gonna have to live with that for the rest of their lives. Not putting blame on humans here, but hopefully this triggers a tightening of procedures, as these kind of tragedies tend to.
- This really reminded me of a colleague who had a part-time night job flying cancelled checks from Centennial Airport (KAPA, south of Denver) to SLC. A bunch of us went out to lunch on a Friday in December 2005. That night, on his return to KAPA, he crashed his Mitsubishi MU-2 about a mile short of the runway. He and his co-pilot were gone, just like that. On Monday you could see the wreckage and cleanup from our office which was near the airport. It was so surreal.by yalestar
- KAPA is a beautiful airport too, and its restaurant "Perfect Landing" on the second floor is S-tier. I've never heard about this case there, though. Do you have a flight number?by HaZeust
- This is probably the worst way a plane could go down. Maximum effect in term of damage. Cargo plane apparently reached V1 (go/no go speed) on the runway, and suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They passed V1, so they knew they were going down. Engine was shedding large debris, including the housing (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.
They were on fire just as they reached V1.
Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway at ground level at 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else.
Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low, they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by then, footage shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.
Plane flipped, continued to smear half of the fuel load for another half a mile.
Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
Footage:
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1985845987684855969?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985849267152699741?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985848132500885995?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985843126934614297?s=46
by octaane - > They passed V1, so they knew they were going down.
To know this, they would have to know they had lost multiple engines. Clearly this is the case by the end, but it's not clear who realized what at what time.
The NTSB investigation will bring more light.
by loeg - It does make me wonder: why are aircraft takeoffs and landings not recorded more often, with higher quality cameras and more angles? If I can watch an NFL replay in 4k a few seconds after the ball is snapped, why not record (and overwrite) all flights that take off and land at every airport?
Like a dash cam, they can save the footage only if there is a problem. Surely that would be much better than splicing together many third party camera recordings.
by SamuelAdams - Have you seen dash cam footage?
High quality cameras are actually really rare and expensive.
by lesuorac - > If I can watch an NFL replay in 4k a few seconds after the ball is snapped, why not record (and overwrite) all flights that take off and land at every airport?
An NFL game has a ton of cameras, a ton of camera operators, those fancy cameras on wire things, an onsite editing crew, and an audience.
To get good recordings, you'd need to invest a lot of time and money, and very few of the recordings would ever be watched. Doesn't seem worth the investment given third party recording seem to turn up quite often and video isn't terribly necessary for the investigation.
by toast0 - Airports might have the footage, but not release it. It's probably easier for a journalist to ask for the footage from a random strip mall parking lot.by Seattle3503
- This is such a commonsense thought that my only guess can be because it would be a liability to insurance/airline carriers to have such helpful footage.
If Flock is going to retain footage indefinitely, why not the FAA/airport, to?
- Because aviation is already incredibly, ridiculously safe compared to essentially every other activity humanity undertakes, and adding additional cost, complexity and expense to the system would produce zero discernible benefit relative to the cost.by avalys
- Most frequently the actions/evidence that lead to a crash would not be captured on airport-located cameras. The holes in the swiss cheese usually start lining up either in the maintenance hangar, en route, or in the briefing room, not on the runway.
The NTSB (and many of their non-US counterparts) are incredibly adept at accident investigation using debris, black boxes and CVRs. Even in cases where the black boxes are damaged and video evidence is available, the video evidence is usually not so helpful as to be able to determine a root cause.
If you take into account that the cameras would be mostly useless in low-light or poor visibility conditions, and the costs associated with maintaining a nationwide network of high-res cameras that cover all runways at all major commercial airports (and ensures their lines of sight and operation through the never-ending renovations going on at these airports), I'm not sure that the benefits of having the cameras make sense.
by njovin - 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.
by sys32768 - > I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane crash.
According to Garp, you just need to buy a pre-disastered home. You'll be safe there.[^1]
(Unfortunately his logic is flawed.[^2])
[^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3TuoGVNbBs
[^2]: https://xkcd.com/795/
by js2 - I also lived not too far from that location, and unfortunately got a glimpse of the aircraft as it was spiraling down. The scene on the ground was pretty hellish.by Diederich
- > 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.
by dmd - The AVHerald is usually the best source for these things, rather than MSM: https://avherald.com/h?article=52f5748f&opt=0
> Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the engine #1 separated during the takeoff run, the center engine emitted streaks of flames, the aircraft impacted a UPS warehouse and ploughed through other facilities before coming to rest in a large plume of fire and smoke.
by cjrp - This is likely relevant
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance...
TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections
by chaostheory - We updated it, thanks. (Original URL was https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-plane-crash-louisville-kent...).by tomhow
- It'd be nice if they offered an RSS feedby culi
- In today's NTSB briefing they said as far as they know the aircraft was not delayed and there was not maintenance work done immediately before the flight. https://www.youtube.com/live/Rw6CtQJckzE?si=9Q98BLIVDJbfZ1QV...by jjwiseman
- Also Blancolirio Youtube is very insightful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3lXl9yfISMby jnsaff2
- 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.
by mrb - https://archive.is/cdKm0
My IP was blocked, for some reason.
by Hendrikto