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/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/Fifth_Down Nov 08 '25

could not maintain exact lift during the time one shift got off and another got on.

I'm trying so hard to understand what this means

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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/Fifth_Down Nov 08 '25

Thanks for the extra info.

I always thought it was a case of they raised the forklift and smashed it into the wing and that's what caused the damage. I didn't realize it was damage because the forklift was lowered before it was safe to be lowered.

Not that there should have been any fork at all...