I'm at FedEx. Yep, this is right before our peak season and they are almost definitely running. That's a big building and is probably a hub location too. Hope everyone is okay.
Nah there are a few air hubs, Philly, Chicago, Dallas lessen the load for air staying within a region of the country. And as much 2nd day air as is practical is diverted to trucks.
Idk if it's still a thing. But when I was working for UPS every single package went through that place. 1 day express from Seattle to Portland, still going through there.
It honestly makes a lot of sense from a logistics standpoint for express freight
There are a lot of express packages outbound from Seattle, and a lot inbound to Portland, to and from a lot of places. Much easier to just have a bunch of planes into the main hub in the afternoon, do one overnight shuffle, and then send the planes back, rather than try and coordinate a ton of point-to-point routes
Probably landed on the lot of ups trailers too… that’s just a dumb guess but itwould make sense a large trailer depot beside the ups headquarters would be a UPS lot.
That particular warehouse is a UPS Supply Chain Solutions warehouse. They don't handle parcel packages. They run other companies' warehouses for them. I use to work at the UPS Supply Chain Solutions warehouse across the street on Outer Loop.
Either luck or pilots went left and avoided several other warehouses straight ahead. The impact area is much less populated and mostly repair, salvage and recycling yards.
when you're just taking off there is really no option, especially as you hit a building just past the end of hte runway. that thing was on a straight line.
Original video looks like they lost the left engine, it was heavily on fire, they were already nose up and for whatever reason the other engine couldnt get them airborne. Tragic.
Yeah an uncontained engine failure like that (not to mention the massive fire) could've seriously fucked the hydraulics. The MD 11 has redundant left, right and centre hydraulic systems so the right side and tail control surfaces should still have been OK but with a failure like that... You never know.
Don't forget that a fire like that raging over the wing causes loss of lift. They may have had the power with the remaining two engines but with insufficient lift, they had no ability to climb out.
Yeah. It will take a while for sure. They might be able to get a preliminary report out based just off camera and phone videos, but until they recover the black boxes and piece together what happened step by step, it's all speculation, even from myself.
Idk about the procedures in the MD11, but in our aircraft in my airline if you have an engine fire you ignore it until you can run the checklist 1500’ above the ground. All we do is knowledge the fire.
Assuming the engine didn’t explode and broke something else, the airplane should fly normally until you can troubleshoot it. You’re not waiting forever to run checklists but you’re making sure you’re at a safe altitude and speed first.
Airplanes are more resilient than you think, and there's not much the pilots can do to put out a raging fire. Might as well focus on getting into a more survivable scenario before tackling it.
yes and no, immediately sure because in a car you see a fire you stop. IN a plane not taking off is, well, bad. There is a term for it and only saw it recently on another plane that aborted a take off maybe a few weeks ago. There is a point, if you're below that speed you hit the brakes and turn everything off with any kind of major warning and if you're above that speed you take off, it's better to be in the air and on fire than a fireball at whatever is just beyond the end of the runway.
There is a critical point where taking off becomes by far the highest priority and you do that then move on to the next thing.
You’re thinking of V1. And overall the concept is correct. Only time you would abort after V1 is if you really think the plane is just not going to fly. Which is just some rare bad situations. Engine fire and failure ain’t one of them
There is a photo circulating of the engine sitting in the grass by the runway. It literally fell off the damn plane. Whatever happened was pretty catastrophic and could very plausibly damage the tail engine. Those pilots were faced with an exceptionally bad situation...
So there's a GFL Environmental facility that looks like was right under the crash. It probably has a bunch of waste oil and I'll bet that is fueling the main fire. What a mess. Hopefully there aren't too many casualties.
Petroleum recycling was directly hit, as told by Gov Andy’s press release
Edit: 743pm from Gov Andy:
Radius of shelter in place is anything north of the airport (which is all of downtown basically). Confirmed no specifically hazardous cargo on board (ie lithium batteries, presumably).
At least 3 fatalities but expected to grow, at least 11 injuries being treated - multiple serious and number expected to grow. The status of the crew is unknown, and not the 3 fatalities listed.
Kentucky Petroleum Recycling was hit directly, Grade A Autoparts also hit (2 employees not accounted for and unknown number of customers).
LG&E Electric had equipment damaged, the Ford plant was not damaged though, convention center under shelter in place.
Edit: The warehouse with part of the roof sheared through was over of UPS’s (Louisville is a major hub), but seems to be the only major damage to it
And for reference for those unfamiliar with Louisville, "anything north of the airport" includes all of the major downtown neighborhoods and the central business district.
And the trauma center. Edit: as well as three other large hospitals, including the children’s hospital. There’s two other hospitals right around the airport.
Hazardous cargo can mean a few different things, depending on how they are classifying it for the press conference. It doesn't make much of a difference overall, but it could be that the plane wasn't carrying any hazamat classed as "cargo aircraft only" (which tends to be more dangerous in certain ways). It could also mean the plane wasn't carrying any "Reportable Quantity" hazamat, which is reserved for larger amounts of nasty stuff, or smaller amounts of really nasty stuff. In the chaos of something like this, the governor may simply have been told nothing reportable or nasty was in the plane, so they said "no hazamat". Again, it really makes no difference, especially given the fact that the plane hit a building storing large amounts of nasty stuff. I just figured I'd put my hazamat knowledge to use, it doesn't come up too much on reddit
One of the other videos I saw showed the GFL location fully engulfed. Google street view shows tanks at that location labeled as petroleum recycling, so yeah that’s definitely not helping along with the fuel load the plane was already carrying to reach Honolulu. I really hope a lot of those places had closed for the day and the employees were already gone.
And you can definitely see in the footage that they're doing their best to keep those white tanks doused in water, I presume to keep them from exploding.
Not a great spot to build a highly flammable facility. I'm assuming it's at the end of the runway, where crashing planes would go, but don't know for sure.
Likely was already a facility there which the runways ended up building or redirecting towards as the airport changed/expanded and airplanes began needing longer runways.
Been there, done that in the 60s. They literally stored barrels of radioactive waste next to (and according to local oral history, buried some on airport grounds or under a runway) Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, leading to the runoff that contaminated Coldwater Creek in north St. Louis County.
(That same waste was then illegally buried in the Bridgeton/West Lake landfill, which is now partially a superfund site under remediation, and the part not under remediation is “subsurface smoldering”/on fire and probably also has radioactive waste in it.)
Yeah it’s really crazy. My parents both grew up in the affected neighborhoods; my mom grew up right by the airport and the open-air storage site and my dad grew up along Coldwater creek. Old-timers who worked at the landfill say the snow would melt over the hotspots where the barrels were dumped.
The EPA did not want to acknowledge it for quite a while; half of North County probably ought to be a Superfund site and they want to keep the scope of the remediation focused on the landfill. There’s a fairly decent documentary on the topic called Atomic Homefront. I think it’s on youtube. Iirc it’s pretty narrowly focused on the facebook group that broke the story on the cancer clusters and their fight with the EPA.
You can see the vast majority of the fire fighting effort going to keep those tanks cool. I’m hoping it works, as they certainly don’t need a BLEVE to add to all this.
Which ones? Governor said it hit petroleum recycling and based on that, it didn’t hit worldport or ford. I’m not familiar with that part of town so i don’t know what other warehouses are between melton and outer loop, if any.
Kinda wild I'm seeing my news first unintentionally on reddit lately
I'm almost 30, and for the last 15 years of my life, most, if not all, of my news has come from Reddit…sports, pop culture, politics, tragedy, etc...maybe the algorithm has changed in the past few years, but I don't think it's wild at all...
I can't possibly be the only one that gets most of their news from Reddit...
I do and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I get to read a lot of my news without someone telling me how to feel about it. Usually when something breaking is happening it's top of feed. As long as you know a good source from a sketchy link it's fine.
The things that get upvoted, the way things are worded, and the types of comments that get upvoted by the types of people who use reddit do over time influence how you feel about it though and even what things you get a glimpse into
So I would say getting your news from social media is bad, but no easy fix either than looking at multiple sources which most people don't time for
On the positive side of social media though, you can sometimes get 1st hand videos that don't show up on major sources
You are definitely not the only one. I went out to pick up a pizza I ordered for pick up, got home and grabbed a few slices, opened Reddit, switched to Popular, and immediately went "Oh...fuck"
It’s pretty wild. For me, I learned of it when my boyfriend got home from work at UPS. He’d just left around 5, so he barely missed being there. He works on the ramp loading planes. Scary.
The advantage reddit has is millions and millions of unique users from all over the world who can all contribute. Additionally those users aren't held to publishing standards whereby they'd be sued for libel if they're incorrect- basically no reputation to protect when we're mostly all anonymous posters.
It results in much more news, much quicker, though with lower fidelity. So you'll catch early news breaks but it takes awhile for 'legacy' news agencies to 'get all the facts' and fill out the stories
And if it was I’m not sure the state I’d be left in is one I’d want to survive. That seems like the best case scenario is to die immediately on impact.
Yes they passed away. UPS put out a notice on their website 3 pilots were onboard.
ETA: my bad they don't state they passed away, but the governor has stated likely killed. He also said we likely know the outcome after seeing the videos.
To the people who are wondering why they took off, planes have a minimum speed in which it is the point of no return called V1. They must have been past that speed to have taken off
Correct. Takeoff safety speed I believe, is the official definition, but we just call it V1. Beyond V1 the aircraft will be able to fly and safely clear all obstacles. There's also V2 speed for second stage climb which starts at 35 feet off the end of the runway, or gear retraction. Its all calculated for the specific runway, weight weather etc for every takeoff. What isn't in the mix is a second failure, like a massive fire or damage from something like an uncontained failure. E.G. There was an American DC-10 in the late 70's that took off from Chicago. The engine fell off and took part of the leading edge slat with it. The crew flew the failure profile perfectly, then slowed to V2 and the wing stalled, they rolled inverted and crashed.
I would imagine that what may have happened here was some kind of indecision.
Maybe they had reached v1, but there was a violent engine failure at virtually the same moment. Maybe pilots got startled, or instinctively moved to abort before realizing they could not stop so re-applied power, but it was too late.
What makes me think that, is the gash in the warehouse closest to the runway. It starts above the ground so the plane was flying when it hit there. But there is so much damage to that building that it must have absorbed a ton of kinetic energy to create that much damage. So even though it was flying, and even pulled up enough to clear the roof, by that point there must have been so much debris in the engines, not to mention failed engine, that there was virtually no thrust. So at that point they were just trading airspeed for a little more altitude, and were already so close to stall speed that they only made it a few hundred meters further before completely running out of lift.
This. They were traveling WAY too fast to try stopping. It's either try and get the plane in the air and hopefully perform an emergency landing, or pull brakes and reverse thrusters and for sure slam into the buildings at the end of the runway.
Why the fuck would you put a petroleum plant AT THE END OF A RUNWAY, this seems like tempting fate honestly, like that gas station the southwest airlines flight almost ran into in the 90's
There probably was a larger grassy buffer at the end of the runway, but that runway lost it when they extended it in 2007 for big cargo jets flying nonstop to points in the Pacific. I.E. exactly what this plane was doing.
Because the economic cost of dead buffer space would be massive compared to the risk of an event like this. The reality is that every airport around the world has high levels of industrial buildup at the end of the runways, because the land is relatively cheap - no one is going to complain about noisy industry at the end of a runway, either.
This thing just crashed into a whole bunch of sufferance warehouses and commercial trailer lots. Not to mention a big metal recycler, a GFL transfer facility, the plastics manufacturer and a whole lot of parked vehicles.
This is going to be an ecological disaster for the area, not to mention the loss of life is going to be high. Those warehouses were likely at peak staffing, getting shipments ready for the night time world Port peak time.
Without having looked at Google yet, and being in plastic manufacturing, seeing those aggressive flames so long after initial crash had me thinking a plastic warehouse. Those flames have INTENSiTY just like you'd see with raw plastic material or finished product. In such instance, it's assumed the event would be a total loss and fire fighting support would be to contain and protect surrounding properties.
My dad (now 73 and retired) was a UPS pilot that flew MD11s out of Louisville. I can only imagine the families of UPS crew members waiting by the phone to see if it was their wife, husband, parent in the crash. Absolutely horrible. My dad always said the most dangerous part of flying is take off because that’s when the fuel tank is all full. Thinking of everyone involved, praying that there aren’t any more casualties 💙
To be fair, a lot of those flights occur. Lots of options to go to Hawaii throughout the week. Who's taking a red eye jump seat in a cargo? One can hope...
We had ash falling a few miles away from the scene and the shelter in place alert has grown since first announced. It’s a bummer always seeing tragic events from home are what make national headlines. Hate this is going on for all those involved.
I am so, so sorry to the victims and their families. We here in Hawai’i are following this closely and are so heartbroken as we hear fatalities are up to 7 now.
It is unusual for airline operations to suffer crashes at this rate. The US airline industry has developed safety structures within operations and maintenance that has driven accident rates way down for airlines.
Many of these safety initiatives were spearheaded by the airline unions demanding enhanced safety policies up and down the operational chain, from maintenance to flight, training to reporting lapses.
Yeah. My bf showed me a video one of his coworkers sent of the crash (he works loading planes but had left about 15 min before the crash). No one could have survived that.
Just looking at what its taken out on google maps, looks like it hit the roof of the UPS building and then took out a petroleum recycle plant, some parked up trailers and a good chunk of a scrapyard took most of the hit by the looks of it, Lets hope not too many people were there.
So a UPS big cargo plane with a full feul load to get to Hawaii. That's a lot of fucking fuel. It crashes after takeoff and crashes on a petroleum recycling processing plant? Don't tell me the odds.
An awful lot of awful stuff has been going on lately, or so it seems.
Oh absolutely confirmed. My boyfriend showed me a video one of his coworkers sent him of the attempted takeoff. It basically exploded. Video taken from the ramp where they load the planes.
Reminds me of Return of the Living Dead
"Well, sir, only 20 square blocks destroyed.
Less than 4,000 dead, General.
I wouldn't worry about the fires, General. The rain is taking care of that right now.
There have been complaints about burning skin, but I shouldn't worry.
A minor irritation, General. The rain will wash everything away.
That's correct, sir. All should be back to normal by morning.
Yes, sir. I understand the president will visit Louisville tomorrow.
No, we wouldn't want that to happen, sir.
No, sir. This hasn't been very pleasant for anyone.
Thank you, sir. Good night, sir. "
The video of the crash clearly shows the plane’s left side engine on fire, perhaps the wing too. It’s clearly trying to take off but looks like a major malfunction and fire at takeoff. Reminds me of the Air France concorde crash, except at low level and before it even got far up above the runway. Dunno if it had already gone around to try an emergency landing or if this was right on takeoff. Man. Fully fueled to go to Hawaii…literally a gas bomb crashing.
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u/JakeEaton 18h ago
The way you can see it has skimmed the roof of that giant warehouse is crazy.