UPS, FedEx ground MD-11 planes: NPR

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — UPS and FedEx will ground their fleets of McDonnell Douglas MD-11 aircraft “out of an abundance of caution” following a fatal accident at the UPS Global Aviation Center in Kentucky, the companies announced Friday evening.

MD-11 planes make up about 9% of UPS airline’s fleet and 4% of FedEx’s fleet, according to the companies.

“We made this decision proactively on the recommendation of the aircraft manufacturer,” a UPS statement said. “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 conducts “a thorough safety review based on the manufacturer’s recommendations.”

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

Tuesday’s crash at UPS Worldport in Louisville, Kentucky, killed 14 people, including the three pilots of the MD-11 heading to Honolulu.

The cargo plane was almost airborne when a bell rang in the cockpit, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said earlier Friday. For the next 25 seconds, the bell rang and pilots tried to control the plane as it barely took off from the runway, its left wing on fire and without an engine, then plowed into the ground in a spectacular fireball.

The cockpit voice recorder captured the bell, which rang about 37 seconds after the crew requested takeoff thrust, Inman said. There are different types of alarms with varying meanings, he said, and investigators haven’t determined why the bell rang, although they know the left wing was burning and the engine on that side had come loose.

Inman said it will be months before a transcript of the cockpit recording is made public as part of this investigative process.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal accident investigator, said the bell likely signaled the engine fire.

“It happened at a point during takeoff where they had probably exceeded their decision speed to abort takeoff,” Guzzetti told The Associated Press after Inman’s news conference. “They likely exceeded their critical decision speed to stay on the runway and stop safely. … They will need to thoroughly investigate what options the crew may or may not have had.”

Dramatic video showed the plane crashing into businesses and bursting into a ball of fire. Footage from phones, cars and security cameras provided investigators with evidence of what happened from many different angles.

Flight records suggest the McDonnell Douglas MD-11, built in 1991, underwent maintenance while on the ground in San Antonio for more than a month until mid-October. It is not clear exactly what work was done.

UPS’s Louisville package processing facility 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 per hour.

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