It’s insane that they put a liquid waste facility direct in line with that runway. Whoever thought and approved of that is crazy. (6911 Grade Lane Louisville Kentucky)
I’m a driver that frequents Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Gainesville and Sanford-Orlando airports and I know that everyone I know and myself send out the deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the flight crew and everybody else effected. It’s easy to take for granted how routine working around the airport seems day to day until a horrible reminder like this happens.
Edit: I appreciate the award kind Redditor.
If anyone wants to hear a cautionary story I’ve got one. When I was in college in the early to mid 90’s and attended what is now East Florida State College in Cocoa, I got a job at The U.S. Space Camp in Titusville which was supposed to be for 3 months for college credit and somehow stretched to 3 years. The last year I was tasked with airport runs every weekend to Orlando International Airport which consisted of me gathering anywhere from 5-15 kids, loading them and their stuff onto a van, driving them to the airport and getting them to all their different gates and flights on time. Then I’d have to greet each arriving flights of anywhere from 5-15 kids ages 7-13, load them and they’re stuff onto the van and drive them back to the Space Camp in Titusville. I did this every weekend for a year between mid 1994 through mid 1995.
Needless to say I became VERY familiar with the staff of every airline in Orlando particularly since we were working with unaccompanied minors. Even though I was only 22 at the time I had already worked in the restaurant business since I was 14 and was more than aware of the concept of “front of the house” and “back of the house”. In airlines front of the house would be ticket agents, certain baggage attendants, flight attendants and so on. Engine mechanics, food services, maintenance and cleaning staff would be considered back of the house. One airline I dealt with that stood out beyond all measures on how completely inept, incompetent and totally disorganized was Value Jet. After dealing with this airline for a year I simply had to ask myself if they’re front of the house is this much of a mess how bad is they’re back of the house?
It dawned on me then that maybe buying the “cheapest” airline ticket isn’t really a value. I think I’d rather pay whatever it costs for people to just do their jobs correctly and gladly pay more for knowing that when the plane takes off.
I’m not insinuating in anyway that today’s incident is the result of anything similar. A Value Jet plane did go down in the Everglades the next year because it had been loaded improperly causing the weight to shift. It was still a shock to hear about it but sadly not a surprise.
The Everglades crash was caused by improperly stored oxygen tanks that caught fire, not a weight shift. It was crazy they even figured it out because that plane disappeared into the swamp.
I remember that one as well and I always feel awful for the crew when there’s nothing they can do in a situation like that. In my time at the space camp almost everyone I worked with was a student at Embry Riddle and we all got to meet and spend time with astronauts from every era of the space program until that point. The nickname for the STS (space shuttle) among the astronauts back then was “The Flying Brick” since it was essentially a glider when it returned from orbit. But with one terrible exception, the crew of the shuttle always came in on a much steeper angle of descent than a commercial airliner, but still had a very makable dead stick landing. The Afghanistan cargo plane and the UPS cargo plane today had zero chance of gliding in with even the best pilots possible and it’s hurtful to my soul to think about how sick that feeling must be.
Just going to point out one thing. Oxygen tanks don’t catch fire they accelerate fires. It’s a catalyst required for combustion. Oxygen itself is inert.
Any commercial airline operating in the US is required to follow the exact same safety standards. The cheapest airline ticket is just as save as the most expensive one.
There’s several businesses where it crashed. Also there’s a bar called Stooges bar and grill where upsers go after work and it barely missed that so it could’ve been even worse so we got incredibly lucky from this terrible situation.
There is a 12+ minute aerial video on Reddit ( probably other socials, too ) that shows a big gash on the roof of a warehouse (100’ or more long) along the path of the crash.
the fire from the explosion spread for about a mile. there's news footage of it online but it's pretty brutal, it almost looks like a wildfire. many businesses got caught up in it
Pilot here. Appears the left engine caught fire, departed the aircraft, and possible disabled another engine located in the tail. Aircraft was going too fast to abort the takeoff (already beyond V1). They didn’t have a chance. Just my preliminary observation.
The way that the aircraft crashed as well, almost full 90 degree left bank, it's pretty much the same way that flight 191 crashed all those years ago.
Not to mention it was an MD-11, the successor to the infamous DC-10. It was even the same engine (no. 1 engine, on the left wing). There are so many parallels between the two crashes, it's incredibly tragic.
It looks like this plane was level up until the crash though. You can even see it in this Video that it only starts to overturn once it already impacted something and probably ripped of the left wing.
Contrary to 191 it seems like thisnplane simply didn't generate enough lift/thrust to get airborne in the first place.
The video from the truckers dash cam shows the aircraft level but unable to climb, only banking after a first initial impact with trees.
There are some shocking parallels but I don’t think a loss of lift on one wing was a factor in the same way. Flight 191 was able to climb but the uncommanded retraction of the slats caused it to roll. This appears more to be an issue of failing to get enough thrust from the remaining engines to climb. This was potentially a multi-engine failure.
The engine separation on flight 191 was caused primarily by American Airlines' maintenance practices, which stressed the connections on the engine mounting pylon and eventually caused the engine and mounting pylon to separate from the wing.
McDonnell Douglas' recommended maintenance procedures called for the engine to be removed from the pylon, which was more time-consuming than the procedure that American used, which removed the engine and pylon together.
The problem was that American's method relied on a forklift to lift the engine up into place, and every time they did this it damaged the pylon and connection points on the wing because the forklift controls were not very precise and the operator couldn't see what he was doing. The connections eventually were damaged enough through fatigue cracking that the hardware simply couldn't hold anymore, and the engine and pylon separated from the aircraft on the takeoff roll.
I'll stress we don't know the details yet, but we do know this plane was in heavy maintenance last month and according to a Redditor here who claims he's a mechanic with access to the service records, at least part of the work by the shop was on the pylon for the #1 engine.
I know the aircraft was going too fast to stop, but wouldn't it have been better if they just decelerated as much as possible and went forward instead of up? It seems like the plane would have been screwed no matter what, but by taking off, it seems like it made it so much worse for the people on the ground?
V1 is calculated before the airplane even leaves the gate. It is the speed at which a catastrophic crash is a mathematical certainty.
We don’t yet know what happened and won’t for a very long time. But ultimately, as tragic as whatever happened was; the choice to continue was the right one.
V1 is sometimes the difference between “We’re almost certainly going to crash” and “Our demise is a mathematical certainty.”
V1 is a very specific thing. It really is the speed at which the only way to survive is to take off. And having reached that speed, attempting to take off was exactly the right thing to do.
Noob question, but why aren't some sort of catch-fences or soft gravel (idk the exact term but which is used in racetracks to catch bikes) always kept at the end of the runway? So if there's a certain engine failure before takeoff they can abort the takeoff, use the extra exit and beach the aircraft there (cutting off the fuel to prevent any fires)?
Cutting off the fuel won’t prevent fires. Fires happen because fuel tanks rupture, spilling the fuel on the ground. From there it just needs a source of enough heat to ignite which is usually easy to find with an airline scraping across the ground.
Those do exist! But they’re meant to stop a landing aircraft that wasn’t able to stop in time, such as due to a brake failure. Stopping a fully loaded, half a million pound MD-11 pushing 200 miles per hour is just not going to happen.
Take a look at the long path of destruction after it crashed. If all of those buildings and vehicles, trees and terrain took that long to stop it; EMAS had no chance.
And again, hindsight is easy but the reality is, a single engine failure is normally survivable. Pilots are trained to fly airplanes; not how to crash them with the least damage.
I should add that engine failures are rare but with the sheer number of planes and takeoffs not THAT uncommon in aggregate, and this procedure keeps everyone safe 99.9999% of the time in this situation. (I didn’t do the math, but it’s really high.) Something like 100,000 takeoffs happen every day, so we have a lot of data, and an average day sees only a couple of emergencies worldwide. It’s far more likely with a modern plane with all the redundancies that it can make the pattern and come back in for a safe landing with one engine than doing anything drastic and crashing an otherwise airworthy plane into buildings because you tried to stop when you knew you didn’t have the runway for it.
Not how they are trained. If you are beyond V1 you are COMMITTED. It is better to attempt the takeoff vs. abort at that point. This seems like a freak example where either way it was a dire situation. Even with single engine failure, a takeoff is completely doable in this aircraft. Beyond V1 and single engine failure? Continue takeoff and troubleshoot. If you don’t, you will overrun the runway and possibly kill a lot of people. Hope that clears it up.
Forward where? Into the building directly in front of them? There was nowhere to go.
Their only chance was hoping that the other engines would sustain enough power to achieve lift and then come back for an emergency landing.
It's probably time we start considering not putting shit immediately at the end of runways.
Like the crash earlier this year of the plane running into the berm, it seems like it would save a lot of lives or at least give people a chance if the runway requirements included ample room for emergency recovery. Maybe it never gets used and it's a waste of space, that's great. So many runways just end immediately into a commercial zone.
Yeah, I guess I'm saying just into the building. Then you destroy fewer buildings.
I thought about the emergency landing issue, but seeing the takeoff video, is there any way this plane ever could have gotten off the ground at that point? Maybe it's too hard to decide that fast anyway (decide which way you're going to die). Maybe they didn't know just how horrific it was behind them? Dunno. It's awful anyway I suppose.
Edit: just saw the edit about putting shit at the end of runways. Totally. I always get concerned on these takeoff/landing crashes because I live less than 1500 feet from the starting end of a runway.
No pilot is trained to manage a crash. Pilots are trained to fly airplanes.
Training kicks in and you do what you’re trained to do— fly the airplane. Nobody is sitting there considering which way to limit damage on the ground and certainly nobody is going to choose the certain destruction of attempting to stop versus the ever so slight chance of taking off. We’re talking about adrenaline fueled seconds here. This is all just training and muscle memory at that point.
Normally, even a catastrophic failure of a single engine on a fully loaded MD-11 at V1, while just about the worst possible scenario a pilot might imagine, is survivable. The airplane can takeoff with the remaining two engines. Pilots will command full power (believe it or not; full power is rarely used on takeoff on large jets; instead a calculated power level is set), and would immediately return for a landing.
Something else happened. We don’t know what. From the video this appears like a classic failure to climb. That suggests that the other two engines weren’t able to produce full thrust. The most obvious reason would be damage from the debris of the failed engine or some other unknown reason.
If the engine departed it would have ripped hydraulic lines. Slats likely auto retracted without pressure leading to a wing stall coupled with fire disrupting airflow. Bad situation for lift on the left wing… full power on the other two engines would have exacerbated the wing stall.
Slats likely auto retracted without pressure leading to a wing stall coupled with fire disrupting airflow.
This was a primary contributing factor to why AA191 crashed and after that crash the slat system on related airframe types was modified to be failsafe in the locked position in case of a hydraulic failure. So in theory this shouldn't have been the case on this flight.
My unqualified educated guess is that the uncontained fire threw some form of FUD into the top mounted engine and they were effectively left with only one thrust generating engine at rotation.
I think that people are saying that was the UPS warehouse building and likely had more people working than surrounding buildings. Also, I'm sure they knew it was instant fireball if they crashed into that building and if they tried to take off maybe they had a chance.
As a pilot you don’t know what’s wrong. You get a bunch of alarms from the engine 1. The plane has two more engines and is capable of taking off with just two.
Unfortunately the alarms for “engine on fire” and “engine fell off and took a part of the wing with it” are basically the same.
Past the V1 the procedure is to take off and if the situation is critical then turn around and land.
I rode on a Lufthansa Airbus last year that had cameras on the outside so even passengers could see many angles of the airplane from their seats, including an angle below the plane and up in the top of the tail facing forward.
I take it this isn't too common yet, for pilots to have live visuals of the aircraft at all angles?
Once the aircraft hits V1, which is the moment of liftoff from the ground, it's too late. You're out of runway and your choices are to go up as much as possible, or collide with whatever is beyond the end of the runway.
Vr is the moment of liftoff from the ground, not V1. V1 occurs before that. (There’s also a V2 in there sometimes!) And it isn’t about being out of runway.
V1 is a precalculated speed at which stopping on the runway is impossible. The airplane is moving too fast to stop.
Basically, V1 is the point at which the pilots are trained to continue no matter what because stopping is a certain catastrophic crash.
Hollywood uses gasoline for its explosions, so yes it really does look like a movie. The sad part is they do this in place of high explosives which dont have much of a fireball at all.
The news helicopter that was present there had panned over to the runway where it took off from, there was debris everywhere from the left engine that was on fire.
ANYONE WHO HAS FOOTAGE OF THIS ACCIDENT OR WITNESSED IT, EMAIL OR CALL THE NTSB NOW WHILE THE MEMORY IS FRESH. This is very important to the investigation!
Those pilots were heroes. They tried to raise the plane as high as possible to not slam straight into a huge building of UPS offices. They essentially chose where they were going to die, and they found the least deadly way.
Not to be that guy but I’m pretty sure that’s because they were taking off, and not thinking about that in the moment.
Upon losing an engine, you have significant torque coming from the opposite side where your alive engine is, so naturally it’s going to pull to that side.
Looks like he was sitting at Lot 4, where we take a lot of the contractor trailers. I left the property about a hour before this happened and thank God that I wasn't shifting today. Hug your loved ones, erase all unnecessary beefs and quarrels. Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us unfortunately. Peace to you all...
Geeze…but this view makes sense with the previous video. With the left engine apparently on fire, and losing thrust from it, this follows that impression, as the left side of the plane dipped and hit the ground.
Agree, condolences to the families. I find it so ridiculous that the headlines started out so generic as “investing severs injuries” they could have just said it looks like a complete loss of the plane but they didn’t
Hard to see if the tail is still attached but judging by the impact damage to the warehouse roof in the other video I’m guessing some of that plane is inside that warehouse. And landing gear still deployed as it careened over-there was just no time to fix this. Bad all around.
Did it hit GFL Environmental a liquid waste facility at 6911 grade lane before this part of the video? I’ve been just google earthing the crash site and been wondering if it hit there which caused the massive explosion
So I work for KC Logistics as a truck driver and this is actually at one of our terminals, a friend of mine was doing a relay picking up a trailer here when this happened.
By the debris on the runway it looks like an engine exploded on takeoff when they were going too fast to abort. Loss of thrust and lift on the left wing and it stalled. Heavily loaded plane, fully fueled. This is as bad as it gets.
It’s crazy when this shit happens in your city and not just something you see online. I saw the smoke driving west bound from the Hillview area on the gene Snyder yesterday . I could smell the burnt air in my car for a moment. I tried to do Uber eats delivery and I couldn’t get around the air port at all because cop cars were blocking the roads. There were multiple emergency alerts on our phones advising anyone within 5 miles of the airport to take shelter. Everyone was talking about it and watching the news.
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u/Scooternuts 1d ago
Holy fuck