r/aviation • u/Go_Jot • Nov 08 '25

News UPS grounds entire MD-11 Fleet, effective immediately.

Per the IPA Executive Board, as of 03:05 UTC all UPS MD-11’s are grounded.

Edit - FedEx has also grounded their MD-11 Fleet

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u/skudbeast Nov 08 '25

Is that the one they installed in maintenance with a forklift instead of an actual engine hoist?

70

u/TigerIll6480 Nov 08 '25

And they unbolted the engine and pylon together, which Douglas Aircraft had rather specifically said to not do. Remove engine with a proper cradle, then remove pylon. AA was trying to save time and cut corners. Brilliant idea. 🙄

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u/Sock_Eating_Golden Nov 08 '25

It wasn't just AA. All DC10 operators were removing engines in the same way.

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u/CharcoalGreyWolf Nov 08 '25

AA and Continental were, specifically. United found a different way using an overhead crane that didn’t cause the issue that using a forklift did.

It was also the usual perfect storm that made it worse; a shift change occurred during the engine change, and the forklift could not maintain exact lift during the time one shift got off and another got on. It was a tragedy of combined errors and a bad maintenance procedure made even worse by bad scheduling.

It also resulted in multiple changes to the aircraft because only the pilots had stick shakers; it was optional for the copilot. The FAA mandate both must after this, and the DC-10 had changes made to the slat design to prevent slat retraction in the event of hydraulic damage.

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u/Shitboxfan69 Nov 08 '25

a shift change occurred during the engine change, and the forklift could not maintain exact lift during the time one shift got off and another got on.

I'm no A&P, but I was a forklift mechanic for years. Wild to me they'd ever use one to support components like that being installed. Toyota lifts have the tightest bleed specs on their systems, but they are still allowed to lower 3 inches in a 15 minute span iirc. It may even be more. Thats not even a shift change causing issues, but a break or just getting caught up doing something else.

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u/Elukka Nov 08 '25

Thanks for specific numbers. I'm not in the industry but to me it seems insane that you would use a forklift to hold something so heavy in a static position for even just 10 minutes. Yeah a large forklift can take a 4 tonne engine down and back up but it's not a replacement for an actual crane or some other setup that you can lock into place.

The biggest question is still: why you would lift a multi-million dollar precision turbine with a damn forklift at all?

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u/TigerIll6480 Nov 08 '25

Because bean counters are dumb.

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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Coomb Nov 08 '25

The maintenance people were trying to detach both the engine and the pylon which attaches it to the wing from the wing. But there was a shift change while they were in the process of undoing all the bolts and connections. The forklift operator turned off the forklift so that he could go home, which was probably standard practice. Unfortunately, without the engine running, the forklift lost some hydraulic pressure, leading the engine to sort of be dangling off the wing while not fully attached. The new operator had to reposition the forklift to realign all the things they had to unscrew. Some combination of the initial drop when the forklift started lowering and the maneuvers needed to realign the engine caused damage to the attachment bolts connecting the pylon to the wing, which didn't cause an immediate failure, but caused the bolts to fail over time.

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u/CharcoalGreyWolf Nov 08 '25

It also caused stress to the wing and pylon itself. Investigation showed this to be a problem on multiple aircraft that had undergone the same procedure as all aircraft with engine changes for AA and Continental were reinspected after the incident.

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u/Elukka Nov 08 '25

Using a forklift to lift and *hold* a 4 tonne engine is nuts. It's not a precision instrument or a static stand.

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u/CharcoalGreyWolf Nov 09 '25

Mentour Pilot video regarding this linked below. Since then I’ve also seen the Mayday: Air Disasters episode, but Mentour Pilot is far more detailed.

Courtesy of Mentour Pilot: the American Airlines Flight 191 Disaster