The death toll from a UPS cargo plane crash in Kentucky has risen to at least seven and is expected to rise further, authorities say.<\/p>\n
The crash occurred at Louisville International Airport about 5:15pm, local time, on Tuesday as the plane was departing for Honolulu, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said.<\/p>\n
A massive fire was ignited, leaving a thick plume of black smoke over the area.<\/p>\n
Video showed flames on the plane’s left wing before it lifted slightly off the ground, crashed, and exploded in a huge fireball.<\/p>\n
Three crew members were on board at the time.<\/p>\n
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said seven people had been killed and 11 were hurt, some with “very significant injuries”.<\/p>\n
“Anybody who has seen the images, the video, knows how violent this crash is,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A fireball erupted near the Louisville airport after the plane crash on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 (AP: Jon Cherry)<\/p>\n
The Louisville airport is home to UPS Worldport, a global hub for the delivery firm’s air cargo operations and its largest package handling facility in the world.<\/p>\n
The crash will likely disrupt deliveries for UPS, and its major customers, including Amazon and the United States Postal Service.<\/p>\n
Mayor Craig Greenberg told WLKY-TV there was large amount of jet fuel on the plane, an “extreme reason for concern in so many different ways”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The plane, which was reportedly carrying more than 100 kilolitres of jet fuel, exploded after the crash. (AP: Brad Harvey)<\/p>\n
UPS’s largest package handling facility is in Louisville. The hub employs thousands of workers, has 300 daily flights and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.<\/p>\n
The Louisville airport is only a 10-minute drive from the city’s downtown, which sits on the river bordering the Indiana state line.<\/p>\n
There are residential areas, a water park and museums in the area.<\/p>\n
The Louisville Metro Police Department said it was responding to reports of a plane crash and that injuries had been reported.<\/p>\n
All flights scheduled to and from the airport on Tuesday were cancelled.<\/p>\n
According to FAA records, the MD-11 freighter involved in the crash was 34 years old.<\/p>\n
Boeing, which owns the MD-11 program, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
FlightRadar24 said the plane, which began operations with UPS in 2006, had flown from Louisville to Baltimore earlier on Tuesday before returning to Louisville.<\/p>\n
The flight from Louisville to Honolulu typically takes eight-and-a-half hours, the flight tracking service said.<\/p>\n
Tom Brooks Jr, who runs a metal recycling business down the street, said the unbelievable magnitude of the crash “just rocked the whole place”.<\/p>\n
“This was massive. I mean, it literally looked like a war zone,” he told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Pablo Rojas, an aviation attorney, told AP that based on the videos, it appeared the aircraft was struggling to gain altitude as a fire blazed on its left side around one of its engines.<\/p>\n
Given the large amount of fuel it was carrying, once the fire started in that area, it would have been only a matter of time before there was an explosion or the fire grew rapidly.<\/p>\n
“Really, the plane itself is almost acting like a bomb because of the amount of fuel,” he said.<\/p>\n
Reuters\/AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death toll from a UPS cargo plane crash in Kentucky has risen to at least seven and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,79974,1154,134,4715,16736,154500,1155,427,1055,83996],"class_list":["post-263553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cargo","tag-crash","tag-entertainment","tag-kentucky","tag-louisville","tag-lousville-airport","tag-plane","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-ups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}