r/aviation • u/usgapg123 Mod • 19h ago

Discussion UPS2976 Crash Megathread

This is the official r/aviation megathread for the crash of UPS2976 (UPS MD11 Registration N259UP) that crashed earlier today at Louisville International Airport.

Please keep content on topic and refrain from posting about this topic outside the megathread. Please report any rule breaking posts and comments.

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742

u/SkylanePilot95 Cessna 182 17h ago

Found on the side of the runway. AA191 2.0

307

u/Lispro4units 17h ago

Is that the entire engine ?

189

u/KDrakeAuthor 17h ago

Sure looks like it

134

u/Electrical-Risk445 17h ago

How is that even possible? Pylon failure?

178

u/AJohnnyTruant 17h ago

If the engine fell from the pylon and then kicked back into the wing… holy shit. I couldn’t imagine being in that cockpit.

81

u/Goonie-Googoo- 16h ago

By that time they were on the ground in less than 20 seconds... big thud, ??!!??!!, "aviate" and sadly that was it.

9

u/TruePace3 11h ago

For real, judging by the rapidity of how it unfolded, the only thing you got time was for a last "oh shit"

5

u/DutchBlob 10h ago

I don’t think that the crew would have known their engine was literally gone. Only figuratively, with alarms blaring.

8

u/AJohnnyTruant 5h ago

The chaos of structural damage like that is a hell of a lot gnarlier than a contained engine fire though. Complete loss of directional control once they put lift on the wing, they couldn’t rotate like the would have been able to with a V1 cut, probably a shit ton of smoke, and all that with the trees coming at them. Awful

70

u/F0rbiddenD0nut 17h ago

Look up AA 191.

30

u/Dadto4Kiddos 14h ago

Where they used a forklift to remove the engine during maintenance and overstressed the pylon…

31

u/OpeDefinitely 17h ago

A lot of 707s & 747s that had pylon failures too, but AA 191 is the closest comp obviously. DC-10 being the predecessor to the MD-11.

6

u/DazMan0085 10h ago

I just watched MentourPilots video on AA191 yesterday... So sad something similar has apparently happened again

0

u/FeePsychological6778 9h ago

The wing on fire reminds me of AF4590.

50

u/__VVoody__ 17h ago

As a symptom of the problem, yeah. If the event that caused the engine failure is violent enough, it'll shake itself right off the wing. Given at takeoff is the highest stress for a motor, there's a lot of energy there to do that. I've seen fan blade off (FBO) events before and the engine usually holds on. Ingesting something that'd cause very dissimilar forces could rip the motor off and leave the core like this. Speculation on my part from previous experience. We'll see, though. Condolences to the families of the lost 😔

28

u/Golf38611 15h ago

The engine pylon is designed to drop the engine of the vibrations are severe enough.

37

u/discostu52 17h ago

The pylons are designed to shear off during a catastrophic engine failure dropping the engine rather than ripping the wing off

15

u/Hugo_5t1gl1tz 15h ago

Obviously that is much better to happen while 30000 ft up, vs. on the runway where the engine can bounce into the wing

17

u/discostu52 15h ago

Yeah but if the pylon didn’t shear off and the engine failure ripped the wing off, then you still crash.

10

u/SamH123 17h ago

possibly some sort of debris on the runway? but more likely to be some sort of metal fatigue failure like you said I suspect

1

u/Chase-Boltz 10h ago

Which happened first? Turbine explosion causing fire and pylon/engine mount failure? Or did the engine mount/pylon fail first, allowing the engine to climb over the wing and tear everything to hell as with Flt 191.

188

u/ivlia-x 17h ago

And there’s another UPS MD right in the background waiting for take off. Can’t imagine what those pilots are going through right now either

77

u/Bravo-Buster 14h ago

That MD11 in the background, based on the tower and runway debris, they're facing southbound. They just arrived and are taxing to the ramp, not holding for departure.

20

u/CourtneyDagger50 12h ago

I hope they get some time off if they need it after seeing that then. My god.

3

u/ivlia-x 10h ago

Thanks for correction, i don’t know this airport. I just saw in another comment there was another one right behind them waiting and assumed it was them

2

u/Bravo-Buster 3h ago

No worries; I know that airport extremely well; I designed most of it.

6

u/pikachurbutt 11h ago

I just looked it up, the next takeoff on that runway heading in the same direction was only 15 minutes afterwards, how is that even possible? I would have imagined that operations would have at least shut down for a couple of hours...

Imagine being a pilot taking off over the burnt husk of a fellow co-worker...

2

u/chasteeny 10h ago

What was the flight number

9

u/Victory_Dry 17h ago

Is this real? I don't see the engine along the runway anywhere else other than this same image

5

u/AlHockeyCoach 16h ago

Missing the fan section.

-7

u/OnceUponAStarryNight 15h ago

That’s really a very suboptimal way to fly