ATLANTA — Following the deadly crash of a UPS cargo plane in Louisville, Kentucky, Channel 2 Action News Investigates started looking into the safety history of the type of plane involved and the UPS fleet.
UPS essentially works like any other major airline. The company flies about 1,900 flights a day and has a strong safety record, according to what Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray found in the NTSB database.
Records showed there have been eight crashes involving UPS planes in recent years. The most recent crash before Tuesday’s was in January, with no injuries in that crash.
In California, a crash was caused by windshear, causing significant damage to the aircraft.
There have been two previous fatal crashes.
In 2013, in Birmingham, Alabama, the NTSB listed pilot and first officer fatigue as contributing to an unstable approach that killed both crew members.
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In 2010, two UPS employees died while attempting an emergency landing in Dubai.
Anthony Brickhouse spent two decades as an aviation accident investigator and now consults airlines on safety.
“UPS has an outstanding safety history, crew members, and that doesn’t happen by magic,” Brickhouse said.
UPS currently has a fleet of 516 owned, leased and chartered aircraft.
“Even though it’s a cargo airline, the way that we do safety in the airline world is basically the same. The same type of flight safety department that a legacy airline would have,” Brickhouse said.
The plane itself that crashed in Louisville on Tuesday was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, built in 1991. While no longer in use by passenger airlines, UPS has 27 MD-11s in its fleet.
The Associated Press reports the plane underwent maintenance while it was on the ground in San Antonio for more than a month until mid-October.
A full NTSB investigation will take months, possibly even years.
Brickhouse told Gray that any safety concerns about either UPS operations or the safety of other MD-11s would be flagged quickly.
“If they uncover anything in the next few hours, or days, or weeks that could impact the safety of UPS or anybody who flies the MD-11, they will get with the FAA and that information will get put out to the masses,” Brickhouse said.
Crash scene investigators are trained to answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? And most importantly, what can we do differently to prevent the same thing from happening again?
One thing they will likely be looking into: The causes of the two-hour delay for the flight on Tuesday.
Channel 2 Action News checked Flight Aware, and there were no similar delays with other flights ahead of the crash. two decades
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