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Fatigue cracks were discovered in components of the left engine mount of a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 UPS cargo jet, operating as Flight 2976, that crashed on departure from Louisville International Muhammad Ali Airport (SDF) on Nov. 4, according to a preliminary report released by the NTSB on Thursday.
The crash claimed the lives of all three crew members and 11 people on the ground in the subsequent fire in an industrial area immediately south of the airport and the primary hub for UPS Airlines, known as Worldport.
In the wake of the crash, the FAA issued a series of airworthiness directives (ADs) grounding all MD-11 and DC-10 aircraft.
The report provides a detailed explanation of the construction of the wing-mounted engines on the MD-11, a tri-jet with a third engine attached to its vertical stabilizer. It also covers the maintenance history of the accident aircraft.The left engine, its pylon, and its forward and aft mounts were all recovered along Runway 17R, according to the report, which states that the aft pylon mounts forward and aft lugs broke apart and were found near the runway, while the left-wing clevis, aft-mount spherical bearing and aft-mount attachment hardware were still connected to a portion of the left wing recovered from the crash site.
After cleaning the surfaces of the lug fractures, investigators "found evidence of fatigue cracks in addition to areas of overstress failure."
"The forward top flange of the aft mount assembly was examined for indications of deformation or pre-existing fractures, but no indications were found," the report states. "The spherical bearing was removed from the wing clevis for further evaluation."FIND THE COMPLETE NTSB PRELIMINARY REPORT OF THE CRASH OF UPS FLIGHT 2976 HERE.The 34-year-old aircraft had flown a total of 92,992 hours across 21,043 cycles, according to the report, and was maintained under a continuous airworthiness maintenance program (CAMP).
The UPS CAMP requires a general visual inspection and a detailed visual inspection of the left pylon aft mount at 72-month intervals, the report states, and this was last done on Oct. 28, 2021 (48 months ago).
A 24-month/4,800 hour lubrication of the pylon thrust links and pylon spherical bearings was performed on Oct. 18 of this year - less than three weeks before the crash. The report notes that a special detailed inspection (SDI) of the left pylon aft mount lugs would have been due at 29,200 cycles and left-wing clevis support at 28,000 cycles.A series of images in the report, provided by UPS, show the fire erupting on the left wing as the aircraft began to rotate and take flight.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: FAA issues Emergency Airworthiness Directive following UPS crash in Louisville The flight crew of UPS 2976 NTSB shares early finds from the field in deadly UPS cargo plane crash UPS MD-11 cargo freighter crashes south of Louisville airportFlight-data recorder (FDR) logs show the plane did not get more than around 30 feet above ground level, that the plane cleared a blast fence past the end of the runway, but that its left main landing gear sheared the roof of a UPS warehouse at the southern edge of SDF. The distance from the roof to the impact site is about 3,000 feet, according to the report.
"A witness in the SDF ATC tower reported that the takeoff speed appeared normal for that type of aircraft," it states. "However, the climb rate was not normal, as the airplane did not climb above the tower's height of approximately 200 feet agl. Another witness reported that the airplane stopped climbing and began to lose altitude before rolling slightly to the left."The NTSB generally does not issue probable cause factors in a preliminary report, and did not in this case, which is still under investigation. A final report will likely take at least a year to compile.
Update from UPS Airlines President The release of the report came two days after Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and UPS Airlines President Bill Moore provided an update on the response to help survivors impacted by the crash.
Moore said he received a call from the airlines' leadership team from the airport within 15 minutes after the crash.
"We immediately made the calls to do what we have been trained for and planning for and hoped that this day never came and assembled our incident response team at our headquarters and went through the checklist," he said.
"These last two weeks have been incredibly challenging; it's been very difficult. I can only imagine what the families of the victims have gone through as well. It's been tough. To be very candid, it's been difficult."
Moore said UPS is working with Boeing and the FAA, among others, to address the emergency concerns of the MD-11 aircraft and that the company has secured additional lift from outside resources to help the package carrier operate at its capacity.
"We feel good about what we've been able to secure to get us through the end of the year, which is really the line of sight coming up to our busy peak season," he said.
Asked by a reporter why it was the first time the local community had heard directly from him, Moore said the priority was taking care of victims' families with finances and other needed resources.
"It wasn't until I think Thursday of last week that the coroner announced those names, and Friday, the NTSB handed over the site to us," he said. "So it was really out of respect for those families, all while we were doing a lot of work behind the scenes."
Digital Content Manager Kaitlyn Shive contributed to this report.