The bracket meant to hold the left engine in place on a UPS cargo plane that crashed in Louisville, Ky., earlier this month had cracked in two places before the crash, according to a preliminary report issued Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Parts of the pylon, the mount that attaches a jet engine to the aircraft’s wing, showed signs of fatigue cracks in other places as well, besides the two fractures in parts that were recovered from the crash site, the report said.
The plane, a McDonnell-Douglas MD-11 jet, was taking off from Louisville, bound for Hawaii, late on the afternoon of Nov. 4 when it crashed moments after becoming airborne, killing the three crew members and 11 people on the ground.
The left engine detached from the wing as the plane hurtled down the runway to take off. Flames shot out from where the engine had broken off. The plane plunged back down to the ground just past the end of the runway, generating a giant fireball and plumes of black smoke.
Twenty-three other people were injured.
The crashing plane narrowly missed hitting some businesses, including a Ford manufacturing plant that employs more than 4,000 people.
The plane reached an altitude of 30 feet before its landing gear clipped a UPS building and crashed into two buildings, the report said. One witness in the air traffic control tower told investigators that the plane’s takeoff speed appeared normal, but the plane did not climb at the usual rate.
When investigators recovered the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, they said the crew’s preflight check had been routine. But in the final moments, as the crew tried to control the aircraft as it accelerated down the runway, a bell could be heard ringing. It was unclear then, several days after the crash, what the bell might have been signaling.
Inspectors combed through records in San Antonio, where the plane had been sent in September for a six-week “heavy check,” a comprehensive inspection that goes beyond routine maintenance and includes test flights.
The report issued on Thursday said the left pylon had been inspected visually by a UPS maintenance crew on Oct. 28, seven days before the crash. The plane was not yet due for a more detailed inspection, the report said. Parts of the pylon called thrust links and spherical bearings were lubricated on Oct. 18.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a temporary ban on flying MD-11s, as well as nearly a dozen other models of jet built by Boeing that have similar engine-pylon structures to the one that investigators believe failed. Boeing, which bought McDonnell Douglas in the 1990s, had already recommended that all companies using MD-11s ground them while the safety board looked into the Louisville crash. MD-11s make up nearly 10 percent of UPS’s fleet of cargo aircraft.
“Before the FAA issued its Emergency Airworthiness Directive for all MD-11 operators, UPS proactively grounded its MD-11 fleet out of an abundance of caution,” UPS said in a statement. “We appreciate the National Transportation Safety Board’s prompt release of preliminary findings and will fully support the investigation through its conclusion.”
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