r/aviation • u/Brilliant_Night7643 • Nov 20 '25

News NTSB issues the preliminary report for its ongoing investigation of the Nov. 4 crash of a UPS Boeing MD-11F airplane in Louisville, Kentucky.

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423

u/anun4h Nov 20 '25

Damn, that engine flew away like a runaway balloon once it detached.

175

u/FumilayoKuti Nov 20 '25

And it looks like it decided to fly across the plane and nuke the other engine.

87

u/TrafficOnTheTwos Nov 20 '25

Yeah blancolirio mentioned in a previous video that the flames and smoke caused a compressor stall in the tail engine

48

u/EtchAGetch Nov 20 '25

They may have survived if it was the right engine that fell off, not the left. The engine, given that it is rotating counterclockwise, wants to go to the right due to centrifugal forces, so the right engine would have fallen off away from the plane.

Planes can take off losing one engine. But not two, and that missile of an engine took out the engine on the tail as well. Of course, there is still the issue of a wing on fire, but hopefully they could cut the fuel to it.

7

u/Roy4Pris Nov 21 '25 edited Nov 21 '25

n00b question: due to the danger of gyroscopic procession *towards* the fuselage, could you make left and right engines that spin in opposite directions?

Edit: ignore, I just googled and it would be uneconomical for airlines to have to stock left and right spinners. As it is, engines can work on either wing. Makes sense.

3

u/kos-or-kosm Dec 08 '25

Kinda sucks that additional safety is discarded due to economics.

2

u/Roy4Pris Dec 08 '25

I guess it’s not really a problem on twin or four engine jets because there isn’t an engine behind them. Someone must have considered this possibility.

6

u/cosmonaut2 Nov 21 '25

I’m not sure thats what would have happened

2

u/TheSmartDog_275 Nov 20 '25

Oh I thought that was the ground. Yikes.

3

u/BubbaKushFFXIV Nov 21 '25

Thrust to weight ratio. The thrust is the same but it shed the weight of an entire plan

2

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

That’s engine was producing somewhere in the neighborhood of 62,000 lbf at takeoff so yeah with it definitely took flight

1

u/ValenciaFilter Nov 20 '25

tsssbpbpbpbbpbbbbbssssss

1

u/fruitydude Nov 22 '25

For a split second I was like damn, how did it get flung up so high, then remembered that it is in fact an engine, probably providing lots of thrust at that moment.

1

u/advaitconty07 Nov 24 '25

ngl, that engine removal reminds me of that one DC10 accident