Louisville, Kentucky– UPS and FedEx said they decided to ground their fleets of McDonnell Douglas MD-11 planes “out of an abundance of caution” in the wake of a fatal UPS crash. World Aviation Centre In Kentucky.
The incident happened Tuesday at UPS Worldport in Louisville 14 people were killedincluding the three pilots on board the MD-11 that was bound for Honolulu.
The MD-11s make up about 9% of the UPS airline fleet and 4% of the FedEx fleet, the companies said.
“We made this decision proactively based on the recommendation of the aircraft manufacturer,” a UPS statement said late 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 would ground the planes while it conducted a “comprehensive safety review based on the manufacturer’s recommendation.”
Boeing, which merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press asking about the reasons behind the recommendation.
Western Global Airlines is the only other U.S. shipping company flying the MD-11s, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. The airline has 16 MD-11s in its fleet, but 12 of them have already been stored. The company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment outside business hours early Saturday.
Boeing announced in 1998 that it would phase out production of its MD-11 aircraft, with final delivery scheduled for 2000.
The UPS cargo plane, built in 1991, was about to take off in the air on Tuesday when the bell in the cockpit rang, Todd Inman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said earlier Friday. During the next 25 seconds, the bell rang and the pilots tried to control the plane as it barely lifted off the runway. Its left wing caught fire and one of the engines was lost. Then plowed to the ground in a stunning fireball.
The cockpit voice recorder picked up the buzzer that sounded about 37 seconds after the crew called for takeoff, Inman said. He added that there are different types of alarms with different meanings, and investigators have not determined why the bell was ringing, although they know that the left wing was burning and that the engine on that side had separated.
Inman said it will take months before a copy of the cockpit recording is released as part of that investigative process.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said the chime likely signaled an engine fire.
“It happened at some point in the takeoff where they were probably overspeeding their decision to abort the takeoff,” Guzzetti told The Associated Press after Inman’s news conference. “They likely exceeded the critical decision-making speed to remain on the runway and stop safely. … They will need to thoroughly investigate what options may or may not be available to the crew.”
Dramatic video The plane was captured crashing into businesses and erupting in a fireball. Phone, car and surveillance camera footage gave investigators clues to what happened from different angles.
Flight records indicate that the UPS MD-11 plane that crashed underwent maintenance while on the ground in San Antonio for more than a month until mid-October. It is not clear what work has been done.
UPS parcel handling facility in Louisville It is the largest of the company. The center employs more than 20,000 people in the region, handles 300 flights a day and sorts more than 400,000 parcels per hour.
UPS Worldport Operations resumed Wednesday night with Operation Next Day Air, or the night type, spokesman Jim Meyer said.
___
Golden reported from Seattle.