Another DC-10/MD-11 crash. Does UPS perform their own engine maintenance, or do they outsource the work? What is the effect of the recent layoff of 40,000 and the current cost-cutting project?

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skim_milk a day ago | parent | next [-]

The last MD-11 crash with deaths was in 2009 and the last DC-10 kerfuffle was when their unapproved replacement parts fell on the runway and killed the Concorde. I wonder if flight 232 gave them a bad name - everybody seems to know that accident. Looks like have a good record otherwise.

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ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-]

The DC-10 had some significant design flaws at the start.

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gmac 21 hours ago | parent [-]

e.g. https://mondortiz.com/the-problematic-cargo-door-of-the-doug...

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dingaling 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The DC-10 was a rushed programme to avoid Douglas being frozen out of the 1970s widebody market by Lockheed and Boeing.

Similarly, the MD-11 was a cost-restricted update of the airframe to avoid McD being frozen out of the 1990s widebody market by Airbus and Boeing.

McD management wouldn't fund the more ambitious four-engined MD-12, so the trijet's fuselage was stretched and aerodynamic tweaks applied.

The MD-11 never met its performance targets and heralded the end of the Douglas commercial line. It was fairly quickly relegated from pax to cargo service where it has a good payload but little else to commend it.

	▲	consumer451 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I always thought that the third engine was thrown into the tail of the DC-10 when they learned of the L-1011. However, I think I first heard that from a retired Tristar pilot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-1011_TriStar

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hshdhdhehd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The company now known as Boeing hoodwinking the FAA back then.

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hollow-moe 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The article has several words highlighted to be links leading to random pages ?

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jacquesm a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe wait with the judgements until the report is in? There are so many possible reasons why this could have happened that have nothing to do with the two items you listed (though it maybe that it does, it is just a bit pointless to assign blame before you know what the cause of the accident was).

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bombcar a day ago | parent | next [-]

I mean the engine is laying on the side of the runway and the plane is seen on fire trying to take off; I'm going to go out on a limb and say maintenance was somehow involved.

Well-maintained planes don't do that.

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jacquesm a day ago | parent | next [-]

You may well be right. Or... maybe there was a non-stress related manufacturing issue with a turbine blade. Maybe it ingested a bird, maybe it sucked in some crap lying on the runway. Maybe there as an issue with a part that was replaced during the 2 hour service just prior to the flight. Maybe there was an error during that service, or a defect that was overlooked. And a million other possibilities.

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pixl97 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean, I don't think I've heard of a bird strike knocking the engine off a plane.

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jacquesm 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh, interesting. They even made a movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

Once an engine breaks the question is whether or not it becomes unbalanced, that is one reason why they can become detached from the plane.

	▲	hshdhdhehd 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Unexpected way to increase air safety: > In an effort to prevent similar accidents, officials captured and exterminated 1,235 Canada geese at 17 locations across New York City in mid-2009 and coated 1,739 goose eggs with oil to smother the developing goslings.[71] As of 2017, 70,000 birds had been intentionally killed in New York City through programs instituted after the ditching.[72]
	▲	kelnos 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The account on that page seems to indicate that the engines didn't detach as a result of the bird strike. One detached upon impact with the river, and the other was still attached.

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rpcope1 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is the MD-11 we're talking about here. As bad as the 737 MAX is/was the DC-10/MD-11 is kind of well known for having all sorts of crazy problems like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

	▲	bombcar 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, the good old Might Disintegrate-11.

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hypercube33 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

There has been at least one crash due to manufacturing defects that no one knew about beforehand or could therefore diagnose. We will find out what happened in about a year once the investigation is complete.

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jacquesm a day ago | parent [-]

Phase of flight is a major contributor to accident statistics with take-off and landing much more often associated with accidents than the rest of the flight.

Take-off asks a lot from the engines, and one nasty bit about manufacturing defects is that they can take a while to show up, but the bulk of them usually surfaces when the aircraft are relatively new.

But: this plane was delayed before the flight due to maintenance on engine #1, so that's the first place where I would start looking for issues without any kind of judgment beforehand on what you would expect to find. And that's the main issue with that comment, it assumes a conclusion, that's not how these investigations work because then you might miss the actual cause. And given how critical these machines are it doesn't take much. All it takes is a single, tiny mistake.

The really bad luck here is that it seems as though the failure of engine #1 took the center engine right along with it. That's one of the issues with that particular design, if you have debris from one of the forward engines it could easily get ingested by the rear mounted one.

	▲	bombcar 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Luckily for me and everyone, I'm not an NTSB investigator, and will probably forget about this before the report is issued :)

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anal_reactor a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. It'll take a while before we look at American planes through lenses other than Boeing straight-up lying.

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trollbridge 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Which was a tradition that started at McDonnell-Douglas, who then became Boeing’s management post-merger.

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loeg 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This aircraft was not built by Boeing.

	▲	watwut 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It was build by a company that got merged with boeing and whose management ended up running Boeing. Which is what made Boeing known for issues.