On Tuesday, 04NOV2025, a UPS-operated MD-11 freighter crashed shortly after take-off near Louisville, Kentucky, the package delivery company’s global hub. The plane was en route from Louisville Mohammad Ali International Airport (SDF) to Daniel K. Inouye Airport (HNL) in Honolulu. According to Washington’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) the accident claimed fourteen lives including three crew members. MD-11Fs represent about 9% of the integrator’s overall fleet.
UPS and FedEx said they are grounding their fleets of McDonnell Douglas MD-11 planes “out of an abundance of caution” following the deadly crash of UPS Flight 2976 on 04NOV at the U.S. integrator’s global aviation hub in Kentucky. It was the deadliest plane crash in the integrator’s history.
TheFAA is leading the investigation supported by the National Transportation Safety Board. National Transportation Safety Board investigators working to determine a cause of the crash have said the outbound MD-11’s left engine detached from the wing during takeoff. The aircraft involved in Tuesday’s crash was manufactured in 1991.
The flight suspensions affected the integrator’s global network
Immediately after the crash, flight operations at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport were temporarily suspended. The company’s Worldport is more than 5 million square feet where 12,000+ UPS employees process more than two million packages a day, according to the integrator.
The McDonnell Douglas MD-11F is a freight plane manufactured originally by McDonnell Douglas at its plant in Long Beach and taken over by Boeing in AUG1997. The variant is primarily operated by FedEx Express, UPS Airlines and Lufthansa Cargo which retired its last MD-11F in October 2021. In total, LH Cargo operated 19 MD-11F units from June 1998 until that date.
Converted from pax to cargo
The aircraft, which is powered by three engines and is therefore considered to be very tail-heavy, also served as a popular wide-bodied passenger aircraft after it was first flown in 1990 by Finnair, the former Swissair and some other operators.
As fuel costs increased, most of the three engine jets were converted to freighters which can uplift between 85 and 92 tons of cargo per takeoff depending on such as range and the specific configuration of the aircraft.
This is the second serious accident involving a UPS freighter, following one on 03SEP2010 when a Boeing 747-44AF, on way from Dubai to Cologne, crashed in an unpopulated area in the outskirts of Dubai killing the Captain and the First Officer.
Investigators determined that a rapidly progressing fire caused by lithium batteries was burning in the forward main cargo deck area. Within four minutes of the first flight deck warning, the fire had severely damaged the flight control systems, making it impossible for the crew to manually control the aircraft.
