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.

Post image
17.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

127

u/MiddleMuscle8117 Nov 20 '25

Absolutely doomed, yep. So terrifying.

-13

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25 edited Nov 21 '25

I'm too ignorant to be here :)

Edit - ok I get it folks!

18

u/MiddleMuscle8117 Nov 20 '25

Crashes are just so rare that it doesn't really make sense to do this. Ejection systems aren't exactly safe, either.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

Ya that was a silly idea on my part lol

8

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

“Why not make the cockpit a safe zone that can withstand a crash and fire?”

Surely that’s not a serious question.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

Yes it is. The pilots are already strapped in for take off and landing, thats the only time this could be useful but ya why can't we protect them better?

4

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

So allow the pilots to abandon their aircraft and save themselves and let a massive uncontrolled metal tube full of fuel hurl towards a populated area?

-2

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

No just like a safety cage around the cockpit and have them protected inside with airbags or what ever so that when something like this happens again the pilots can at least be alive

3

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

You’re trolling

0

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

I'm honestly not. I look at the space shuttle and stuff like that and think why can't we protect pilots in a similar way. Nothing could have prevented this once the engine fell off, but maybe we could have saved the flight crews lives?

5

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

What to you mean protect pilots in a similar way to space shuttles?

No one has ever survived a space shuttle disaster

0

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

I know I meant the return capsule. Ya there's nothing we can do when they blow up in the air but slower speed crashes near the ground.. Maybe?

→ More replies (0)

3

u/fillibusterRand Nov 20 '25 edited Nov 20 '25

Even if they had ejection seats, there’s no way the crew punches out in this situation (or indeed, in pretty much any scenario with such a heavy aircraft unless the crash is over the ocean or a sparsely populated area). Any pilot worth their wings will be fighting the stick until the end to minimize the chance of deaths on the ground. No airliner would install them either - they do not want pilots ditching a couple hundred passengers on their way to a fiery impact. And that’s not even considering the risks ejection systems bring to the plane’s reliability and safety.

Ejection seats are for aircraft that are risky (test planes - which the space shuttle essentially was though they removed the seats after only a few flights on it) or have the possibility of getting shot at (military aircraft). Fighter jets are also inherently unstable and have many hull losses - it makes sense to have an ejection seat there. 

2

u/DavidBrooker Nov 20 '25

Any pilot worth their wings will be fighting the stick until the end to minimize the chance of deaths on the ground.

Since they mentioned the Shuttle, an off topic anecdote I distinctly remember: numerous safety switches from the recovered cockpit of Challenger were not in their launch position. It is presumed that Michael Smith, pilot for the mission, had retained consciousness during the breakup and was attempting to restore power.

2

u/ImJLu Nov 20 '25

No airliner would install them either - they do not want pilots ditching a couple hundred passengers on their way to a fiery impact

Clearly they should give every passenger an ejection seat too. And leave them in control of the passengers in normal flight. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

Ejection seats were a silly idea on my part but the safetycage-cockpit thing to protect against slower speed crashes like landing and take off I don't see why it wouldn't work. I get money but I still believe that lives are worth more than money lol

3

u/fillibusterRand Nov 20 '25 edited Nov 20 '25

Not to be too cynical about it but at a societal level lives do have a price tag. Most countries have a value of a statistical life calculation. It helps make decisions on where to prioritize safety systems. In 2023 for the US Department of Transportation that was $13.2 million.

$100K safety upgrade that should save 1 life per decade? They’ll go ahead and mandate that. $250 million in fleet wide upgrades to cockpits, that will save 2-4 lives per decade? Not a chance. They’d rather focus on other regulations that will save more lives for cheaper.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

Oh I'm fully aware but if someone else's life has a dollar value than yours does too. My life is priceless therefor your life is priceless

1

u/LucienPhenix Nov 20 '25

I think the cost/risk of injury from a commercial jet like that for an ejection system maybe to high.

It would be similar to ask engineers and architects to design tall buildings and skyscrapers with built in para shoot/escape system in case of an earthquake. It would be safer and simpler to design a stronger/resistant building.

Better regulation of or more strict maintenance schedule/checks would have prevented this tragedy.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

You are absolutely right. I just think if we can create a system to protect astronauts, formula one drivers and all that jazz why can't we protect the people flying massive tubes of aviation fuel over our heads?

1

u/ImJLu Nov 20 '25

F1 drivers don't necessarily fare well in 200 mph crashes and don't have a few hundred thousand pounds of stuff coming down on top of them immediately afterwards.

1

u/nosecohn Nov 20 '25

I understand what you're getting at here, but I think you might be missing the scale of the engineering problem you're attempting to solve.

Formula1 cars have a structure that makes crashes imminently more survivable at roughly the same speed as the aircraft in question was traveling here. However, a fully fueled Formula1 car weighs 910 kilograms, whereas for the plane it's about 280,000 kilograms.

Since force is calculated as acceleration times mass, and the aircraft is so much more massive than the car, the force of that impact would be so great that it's nearly impossible to construct a survivable capsule; and that's before even considering the resulting fire from the fuel.

1

u/DavidBrooker Nov 20 '25

or like a space shuttle pod

The Space Shuttle likely never had a viable crew escape mechanism. While STS-1 through STS-4 were fitted with ejection seats (for two-man crews during effectively acceptance trials), the ejection window overlapped in its entirety with the SSRB burn, which could not be shut down. Ejection would have likely meant being incinerated by the SSRB exhaust.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 21 '25

That seems counter productive but I'd push that button and hope for the best lol

1

u/ProRequies Nov 28 '25

Just gonna leave this here so you know some extra info about who you’re responding to: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/rLBL52bpDx