The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the suspension of the use of all MD11 cargo aircraft. to conduct a safety review, after one crashed in Kentucky this week.
The decision comes after a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 plane belonging to the fleet of the American shipping company UPS exploded and caught fire shortly after take-off from Louisville Airport on Tuesday, killing 14 people.
On Friday, the shipping companies UPS and FedEx announced the suspension of the use of this model, while Boeing, which owns McDonnell Douglas, recommended to all operators of these aircraft to stop using them for now.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates air navigation in the United States, issued an emergency directive on Saturday “prohibiting any additional flights until the aircraft is inspected and all corrective measures are implemented.”
The directive extends to the MD11 and MD11F models, according to the authority, which said that it comes “as a result of an incident during which the left engine separated… from the aircraft during takeoff,” and it concluded that “this unsafe situation likely exists or may occur in other products of the same design model,” according to “Agence France-Presse.”
On Friday, UPS announced the suspension of the use of MD11 aircraft, which constitute about 9 percent of its fleet.
She explained: “For the sake of safety; We decided to temporarily stop the MD-11 fleet… We took this decision proactively based on the recommendation of the aircraft manufacturer.”
In turn, FedEx announced that it had suspended the use of 28 MD11 aircraft within its total fleet, which includes about 700 aircraft.
Boeing, which acquired the manufacturer McDonnell Douglas in 1997, confirmed that it had “recommended to the three companies operating the MD11 freighter model to suspend flights until additional engineering analysis is conducted.” The third company that uses this model is Western Global Airlines.
The plane, loaded with about 38,000 gallons of fuel (equivalent to about 900 barrels of oil) on a long flight to Hawaii, almost crashed into a major Ford car assembly plant, which employs about 3,000 people.
Aerial footage of the fall site showed a long trail of debris, as firefighters pushed water to extinguish the flames amidst the smoke.
Todd Inman, a member of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), announced this week that the plane’s black boxes, which record flight data and cockpit audio, had been found and that they would be sent to Washington for analysis.
The death toll rose to 14 after an additional body was found at the site, according to what was announced by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who said on “X”: “Please pray for these families; “For the residents of Louisville and all those affected by this terrible incident.”
This number of victims is the largest in the history of UPS, whose main headquarters is located in Worldport in Louisville, where it employs thousands of people.
The plane, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, was manufactured in 1991 and modified for cargo use.
