On Tuesday, November 4, the world looked on with shock as videos emerged of the fatal UPS Airlines Flight 2976, which burst into flames shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF). The aircraft suffered engine separation, which led to the McDonnell Douglas MD-11F owned by 
UPS Airlines crashing into an industrial area at the end of the runway. The crash has killed at least 12 people so far, and many are still unaccounted for. All three occupants on board the aircraft perished in the incident.
There will be a number of factors that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will dig into to understand the root cause of the incident. The NTSB has already stood up more than two dozen officials, who have already begun looking through the leftover debris from the incident.
Preliminary Report Due Within 30 Days
It is expected that a preliminary report will be published by the NTSB within 30 days; however, the overall investigation could take up to two years to be fully completed. Following the tragedy on Tuesday, it remains a highly delicate subject, with family members of the victims already looking for answers. This incident has not just killed those onboard the aircraft, but also members of the public on the ground, who were going about their normal business in the industrial area near the impact site.
The current debris path is around half a mile long, of which the NTSB will comb through to find as many answers as possible. Many reports of those who witnessed the incident recall the black plumes of smoke turning the sky above Louisville into something you’d see in an apocalyptic movie, and the flames were so large that you could feel the heat. Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg explained in a statement, as shared by CNN:
“There’s so much debris there, there’s so much charred, mangled metal, that not all the bodies may have been located underneath certain things. Going through the various layers (of) debris on the field, that will begin now. Everything to date has been just looking at what can be seen without moving debris.”
A Long Line Of Debris
It has been confirmed that the aircraft was not carrying any hazardous cargo, which could have resulted in a larger environmental issue. However, it is expected that the air quality in Louisville could be poor in the few days following the incident. The pieces of debris that have come off the failing engine, and the location of this, are of utmost importance to the air crash investigation.
NTSB has located the black box, which includes the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. The information on these devices will be crucial for understanding the final moments that led up to the incident. This will show what the pilots were saying in the final few minutes and any actions that were taken.
These devices are to be transported back to Washington, D.C, for analysis. While not every black box can survive a fire, fortunately for UPS Airlines Flight 2976, the box only faced some external cosmetic heat damage, not intrusion.
UPS MD-11F Registration N259UP
Looking at data from ch-aviation, the aircraft at the centre of the incident was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11F, bearing registration N259UP, serial number 48417. The aircraft first entered service in July 1991 for Thai Airways, before being converted to an all-cargo aircraft in June 2006 for the American multinational shipping & receiving and supply chain management company, United Parcel Service (UPS).
As part of the air crash investigation. Maintenance of the airplane will go under the spotlight, to understand what work has recently been done on the aircraft, who did it, and where the parts that may have been replaced were sourced from. Investigators have already requested all maintenance and overhaul records for the airplane, and they will be extremely interested to find out when the last time engines may have been removed or replaced.
Initial footage of the incident shows that the left engine had separated from the rest of the McDonnell Douglas MD-11, leaving the pilots with little to no ability to control the aircraft, which led to its fiery finish. Initial findings show that the airplane had no delay on departure, but the fire on takeoff clearly shows that there was bound to be a problem from the very beginning.
