Federal safety investigators identified maintenance failures and ignored warnings as contributing factors in the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Louisville, Kentucky, that killed 15 people last November, according to The New York Times.
At a National Transportation Safety Board hearing held earlier this week in Washington, D.C., witnesses from UPS, the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing $BA, the Teamsters, and ST Engineering San Antonio Aerospace — the firm that had serviced the aircraft — faced questioning from investigators. Among the contributing factors that emerged: engine mount components were not required to be inspected frequently enough, relevant safety data was not shared across departments, and many mechanics and key personnel had no knowledge of years-old Boeing warnings about a potentially dangerous bearing assembly failure.
UPS Flight 2976, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11F bound for Hawaii, lost its left engine and pylon shortly after taking off from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on Nov. 4, 2025. All three pilots on the McDonnell Douglas MD-11F died in the crash, as did 12 people on the ground after the aircraft struck a business complex near the airport, with almost two dozen others injured, according to CBS News.
Investigators disclosed that the flight crew had been reassigned to the MD-11F after their original plane was taken out of service due to a fuel leak, according to CBS News.
Records show that by 2011, Boeing had catalogued four instances across three separate aircraft in which the component connecting the MD-11's engines to its wings had failed, yet concluded at the time that the problem posed no threat to flight safety, according to ABC News. Rather than mandating action, the bulletin Boeing put out simply encouraged operators to swap in an updated bearing design — a suggestion that carried none of the legal weight of an FAA airworthiness directive, which the agency never issued. UPS did not take additional action after reviewing the 2011 notice, and has said the notification did not require action, according to CBS News.
According to ABC News, the crashed plane's engine mount components had not undergone a thorough examination since October 2021, and under the existing maintenance schedule, another close look would not have been required for approximately 7,000 additional flight cycles.