SAN ANTONIO – A UPS cargo plane that crashed in Kentucky on Tuesday evening was recently on the ground in San Antonio for more than a month.
Flight records suggest the McDonnell Douglas MD-11, built in 1991, underwent maintenance in San Antonio from Sept. 3 to Oct. 18, according to the Associated Press. It’s not clear what work was done.
KSAT’s Dillon Collier has reached out to UPS and ST Engineering, which performs maintenance on planes at the San Antonio International Airport. UPS does not perform maintenance in San Antonio, a source confirmed to KSAT.
The plane crashed and burst into flames on Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky, killing at least nine people. The disaster also shut down the largest UPS package distribution hub and disrupted some flights going in and out of the airport in Kentucky’s largest city.
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Authorities were searching on Wednesday for additional victims in the industrial area next to the airport where the plane slammed into businesses. Several people on the ground were killed, Louisville Fire Chief Brian O’Neill said. Close to 20 people were injured.
A team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived on site Wednesday. Initial findings showed the plane’s left wing caught fire just after being cleared for takeoff, and its engine fell off, the NTSB’s Todd Inman told the AP.
The NTSB will look into the full maintenance history of the UPS plane as well as the engines and other components, Inman said.
However, he said UPS has told the agency that the flight was not delayed and that no maintenance was performed right before it took off.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said it’s too early to know whether the problem at the time of the crash was in the engine, the structure that holds the engine or something else.
“It could have been the engine partially coming off and ripping out fuel lines. Or it could have been a fuel leak igniting and then burning the engine off. it’s just too soon to tell,” he said.
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