Fiery UPS plane crash could spell the end for MD-11 fleet if the repairs prove too costly

The fiery crash of a UPS plane shortly after its left engine flew off its wing and sparked a massive fire during takeoff could spell the end of the 109 remaining MD-11 airliners that have been exclusively hauling cargo for more than a decade.

The fate of the planes won’t be determined until after UPS, FedEx and Western Global see how expensive the repairs the Federal Aviation Administration orders will be and learn whether there is a fatal flaw in their design. The package delivery companies may have already been thinking about retiring their MD-11s — which average more than 30 years old — over the next few years and replacing them with newer planes that are safer and more efficient. The FAA grounded all MD-11s and the 10 remaining related DC-10s after the crash.

Fourteen people — including the plane’s crew of three — died after the aircraft crashed into several businesses just outside the Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky, on Nov. 4. The plane got only 30 feet (9 meters) into the air.

Mary Schiavo, a former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General, said it probably won’t be worth fixing the planes when better options are available from Boeing and Airbus, though the manufacturers have such a backlog that it takes years to get a plane after it is ordered. Still, it will depend on exactly what investigators find.

“For them to order inspections and to ground them as readily as they did makes me think that they’re worried about them,” Schiavo said.

Losing an engine recalls a similar 1979 crash

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that its investigators discovered cracks in key parts that failed to keep the rear of the engine attached to the UPS plane’s wing. The crash reminded experts of the 1979 disaster that killed 273 after the left engine of an American Airlines jet catapulted up and over its wing after takeoff in Chicago.

That crash led to the worldwide grounding of 274 DC-10s, the predecessor to the MD-11. The airline workhorse was allowed to return to the skies because the NTSB determined that maintenance workers improperly using a forklift to reattach the engine damaged the plane that crashed. That meant the crash wasn’t caused by a fatal design flaw even though there had already been a number of accidents involving DC-10s.

The lugs that the NTSB said were cracked and failed in the crash earlier this month are located close to the part that failed in the 1979 crash, but they are different. Investigators will have to determine whether there is a common defect between the UPS plane and other MD-11s or whether the problem that caused the engine to fall off was unique to the plane.

An FAA spokesperson said the agency is working with NTSB and Boeing, which bought the company that made the MD-11s in 1997, to determine what needs to be done.

Both the DC-10 and MD-11 have some of the highest accident rates of any commercial planes, according to statistics published annually by Boeing. Twice in the 1970s, a DC-10 lost its rear cargo door in flight. The second time in 1974 caused a crash outside Paris that killed 346 people. But airlines loved the DC-10 for years, and the Air Force maintained a fleet of dozens of tankers based on the DC-10 that it flew for decades before retiring them last year.

Planes launched with a lot of promise

Formerly independent aircraft company McDonnell Douglas announced the MD-11 in 1984. The three-engine plane appeared promising with its larger capacity and longer range than the DC-10, but its performance never fully lived up to expectations, and newer planes from Boeing and Airbus eclipsed it. Schiavo said the MD-11 was “practically obsolete” when it came out compared to two-engine planes, which are cheaper to operate. Only 200 MD-11s were built between 1988 and 2000.

Most MD-11s started out carrying passengers, but eventually airlines decided to retire the model in favor of other planes. The last MD-11 passenger flight by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines took place in 2014.

MD-11 aircraft made up about 9% of the UPS fleet and 4% of the FedEx fleet, the companies have said. Western Global only owns 16 MD-11 planes.

MD-11s might still fly again

Aviation journalist Wolfgang Borgmann, who devoted one of his “Legends of Flight” books to the history of the MD-11s and DC-10, said, “I think there is still much more useful life in them.” He pointed to the B-52 bombers that are still key planes for the Air Force even though they debuted in 1955.

“Age doesn’t matter in aviation. It’s the maintenance that counts,” said Borgmann, editor of the Aero International magazine in Germany.

Investigators are looking at the maintenance history of the UPS plane closely. NTSB said the last time a detailed inspection was done on its engines was in 2021. A similar inspection was not done during the extended maintenance the plane underwent the month before the crash, and the plane wasn’t due for another in-depth engine inspection until after roughly 7,000 more flights. Boeing and the FAA will have to determine whether that current maintenance schedule is adequate.