A federal investigator said a UPS cargo plane’s left wing caught fire and an engine fell off shortly before it crashed and exploded into a huge fireball in Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday night, killing at least nine people and injuring 11.
At least 28 National Transportation Safety Board agents arrived at the site and began searching for clues about the possible cause of the disaster, which saw the UPS plane crash shortly after takeoff at the Louisville Muhammad Ali international airport, leaving behind a fiery trail of destruction on the ground and a huge plume of black smoke.
After the plane was cleared for takeoff, a large fire developed in the left wing, said agent Todd Inman of the NTSB, which is leading the investigation. The plane gained enough altitude to clear the fence at the end of the runway before crashing off airport property, Inman told reporters.
Airport security video “shows the left engine detaching from the wing during the takeoff roll”, he said.
The cockpit voice recorder and data recorder were recovered, and the engine was discovered on the airfield, Inman said.
“There are a lot of different parts of this airplane in a lot of different places,” he said, describing a debris field that stretched for half a mile.
The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, had three crew members onboard and crashed at about 5.15pm local time on Tuesday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. It was bound for Honolulu.
So far, nine fatalities and 11 injuries have been reported, although Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s governor, has said he expects this death toll to rise. The UofL Health hospital system said that it was treating 10 patients in relation to the crash, with two of them in critical condition at the hospital’s burn center.
“First responders have located nine total [dead] victims at the site of the UPS crash . We will continue to provide information as available,” said Craig Greenberg, Louisville’s mayor.
Four of those killed were not onboard the plane, said Brian O’Neill, the Louisville fire department chief.
Hundreds of firefighters have fanned out to deal with fires that erupted on the ground after the crash, although local leaders have asked the public to not move any debris and instead report it to help investigators piece together the reason for the deadly incident.
“We have put together a form where residents can report debris in your yard,” Greenberg posted on X. “We ask that residents do not touch or move any debris on your own.”
Investigators will work to find out how a seemingly routine flight – the UPS hub at Louisville has 300 flights a day – went so badly wrong. Officials have said that there were no hazardous materials on the plane.
Videos taken by onlookers showed flames on the plane’s left wing, with the aircraft then lifting off the ground before crashing and exploding into a huge fireball. Nearby residents reported hearing loud booms and witnessed flames in the sky and on the ground.
The amount of fuel on the plane would make a large explosion almost inevitable, Pablo Rojas, an aviation attorney, told the Associated Press. “There’s very little to contain the flames and really the plane itself is almost acting like a bomb because of the amount of fuel,” he said.
Mary Schiavo, a former Department of Transportation inspector general, analyzed video of the crash for CNN.
“[The parts] expel from that engine, and the centrifugal force from the engines, the blades spinning, and they can cut through the plane and cut fuel lines,” Schiavo said of the parts. “That engine clearly came off of that plane before the final impact. The poor pilots could do nothing at that point.”
The Louisville airport canceled all outbound flights following the crash. A shelter-in-place order surrounding the airport has now been reduced to a quarter-mile radius around the crash site.
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