{"id":275763,"date":"2025-11-06T19:36:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275763\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T19:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:36:09","slug":"officials-seek-the-cause-of-a-deadly-kentucky-ups-plane-crash-as-they-search-for-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275763\/","title":{"rendered":"Officials seek the cause of a deadly Kentucky UPS plane crash as they search for victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) \u2014 The grim task of finding and identifying victims from the firestorm that followed a UPS cargo plane crash<\/a> in Louisville, Kentucky, entered a third day Thursday as investigators gathered information<\/a> to determine why the aircraft caught fire and lost an engine on takeoff.<\/p>\n

The inferno consumed the enormous plane and spread to nearby businesses, killing at least 12 people, including a child and three UPS crew on the plane, and ending any hope of finding survivors in the crash at UPS Worldport, the company\u2019s global aviation hub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg described the scene as \u201chorrific,\u201d with charred, mangled metal and \u201cstill some smoke rising from piles of debris.\u201d Part of the plane\u2019s tail, he said, appeared to be sticking out of a storage silo. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou hear people say, \u2018Oh, you only see that in the movies.\u2019 This was worse than the movies,\u201d Greenberg told reporters.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, UPS Worldport operations resumed Wednesday night with its Next Day Air, or night sort, operation, spokesperson Jim Mayer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to begin returning the network to a normal cadence. Outbound flights from Louisville arrived at destinations this morning,\u201d Mayer said.<\/p>\n

Remains being identified<\/p>\n

The plane that crashed had been cleared for takeoff Tuesday<\/a> when a large fire developed in the left wing, said Todd Inman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation. But determining why it caught fire and why the engine fell off could take more than a year.<\/p>\n

The plane gained enough altitude to clear the fence at the end of the runway before crashing just outside Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, Inman said. The cockpit voice recorder and data recorder have been recovered, and the engine was discovered on the airfield, he said.<\/p>\n

Greenberg said the remains of 12 people have been found, and investigators believe that number includes the three who were on the UPS plane. The coroner\u2019s office, he added, is working to confirm identities and determine whether the others are nine people who remain unaccounted for based on reports from families.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hope is that we have located all of the victims at this point. But again, we do not know,\u201d the mayor said.<\/p>\n

The crash and explosion had a devastating ripple effect, causing smaller blasts at Kentucky Petroleum Recycling and hitting an auto salvage yard. The child who was killed was with a parent at the salvage yard, according to Gov. Andy Beshear.<\/p>\n

University of Louisville Hospital said Wednesday that two people were in critical condition in the burn unit. Eighteen people were treated and discharged at that hospital and medical facilities.<\/p>\n

Flames, panic, more questions <\/p>\n

People who heard the boom, saw the smoke and smelled burning fuel were stunned.<\/p>\n

Stooges Bar and Grill bartender Kyla Kenady said lights suddenly flickered as she took a beer to a customer on the patio.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a plane in the sky coming down over top of our volleyball courts in flames,\u201d she said Wednesday. \u201cIn that moment, I panicked. I turned around, ran through the bar screaming, telling everyone that a plane was crashing.\u201d<\/p>\n

UPS said it was \u201cterribly saddened.\u201d The Louisville package handling facility is the company\u2019s largest.<\/a> The hub employs more than 20,000 people in the region, handles 300 flights daily and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.<\/p>\n

Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said a number of things could have caused the fire as the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, made in 1991, was rolling down the runway.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d Guzzetti said.<\/p>\n

The crash bears a lot of similarities to one in 1979 when the left engine fell off an American Airlines jet as it was departing Chicago\u2019s O\u2019Hare International Airport, killing 273 people, he said.<\/p>\n

Guzzetti said that jet and the UPS plane were equipped with the same General Electric engines and both planes underwent heavy maintenance in the month before they crashed. The NTSB blamed the Chicago crash on improper maintenance. The 1979 crash involved a DC-10; the MD-11 UPS plane is based on the DC-10.<\/p>\n

Flight records show the UPS plane was on the ground in San Antonio from Sept. 3 to Oct. 18, but it was unclear what maintenance was performed and if it had any impact on the crash. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Golden reported from Seattle. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit; Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky; Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Jonathan Mattise and Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) \u2014 The grim task of finding and identifying victims from the firestorm that followed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,8627,14184,28,157,146796,6659,793,851,114149,146797,569,8639,146798,7737,33717,3,33715,146222,6145,20446,795,35993,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-275763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-andy-beshear","tag-aviation-safety","tag-business","tag-chicago","tag-craig-greenberg","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-inc","tag-jeff-guzzetti","tag-jim-mayer","tag-kentucky","tag-ky-state-wire","tag-kyla-kenady","tag-louisville","tag-national-transportation-safety-board","tag-news","tag-plane-crashes","tag-todd-inman","tag-transportation","tag-transportation-and-shipping","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-parcel-service","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}