The NTSB says it “found evidence of fatigue cracks in addition to areas of overstress failure” in the hardware that attached the left engine pylon to the wing of the UPS MD-11 freighter that went down on takeoff from Louisville two weeks ago. The board also released stunning frames from surveillance video that showed the engine separating from the aircraft as it rotated for takeoff. The engine pitches up and separates from the aircraft, and it’s possible debris from that failure was ingested by the rear engine. The plane never got higher than 30 feet off the ground and clipped a UPS warehouse before disintegrating in a massive explosion as it took out two more buildings and tumbled through a storage yard. A total of 14 people died. The full report is copied below.
Four days after the crash, the FAA issued an emergency AD grounding the MD-11 fleet and two days later it included the few remaining DC-10s in that order. It’s not clear whether subsequent inspections have revealed any other issues with the hardware. The aircraft had 92,992 hours on it at the time of the crash and 21,043 cycles, which was about 7,000 cycles short of an inspection requirement for all that related hardware.
Died in ball of flame
Frustrated not knowing why
We will remember
More and more often we are catching accidents and critical information on video. My old mind still remembers accidents like this one that stumped the investigators. It wasn’t twenty years ago that sometimes they figured it out sometimes they didn’t. So it must be ‘Pilot Error’, the old catch-all.
Looks like they’re going to have to revise down the SDI interval on those lugs (see Figure 9 in that preliminary report and “Maintenance and Inspections” on following page). On AA191, it was the pin that goes through those lugs which failed due to the stress applied by improper mounting technique. This one looks like plain old fatigue even though the result was the same (engine losing retention at aft mount, rotating forward/up/over wing and detaching).
Well the pictures of the engine coming off are all fake, I assume AI generated! The original videos, more than one , do show a tremendous fire on the left wing. However the airplane is firmly on the ground and did not lift off until near the end of the runway, the rotation was two stepped and showed a positive liftoff with wings level only to contact a structure with the left main moments later. I see these photos on several post, so it seams someone has punked the entire aviation journalism industry. Now just think, where on the airfield would you need to be to have this vantage point? Someone ends to confess they did not check……
Robert Armstrong , Bishop Ga
Well, if they fooled us, they also fooled the NTSB. I think I’ll go with the NTSB on this one:)
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/DCA26MA024.aspx
It is likely the wing was on fire first, as part of the support system let go. As the failure continued, the engine thrust itself over the top of the wing, exactly as shown in these images.
These images were from the airport surveillance camera so being “punked” is not logical.
Also, the engine ended up on the side of the runway facing the opposite direction – all of which is consistent with theses video clips.
Com’on
🤡 Get a life!
Counterfeit hardware?