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  1. Home
  2. /Story
  3. /UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
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  3. /UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
Nov 4, 2025 at 6:10 PM EST

UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

jnsaff2
421 points
438 comments

Mood

calm

Sentiment

negative

Category

other

Key topics

Aviation Safety

Aircraft Maintenance

UPS Plane Crash

Debate intensity60/100

A UPS plane crashed near Louisville airport, sparking discussion on aviation safety, maintenance procedures, and the age of the aircraft involved.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Very active discussion

First comment

3m

Peak period

137

Day 1

Avg / period

40

Comment distribution160 data points
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Key moments

  1. 01Story posted

    Nov 4, 2025 at 6:10 PM EST

    21 days ago

    Step 01
  2. 02First comment

    Nov 4, 2025 at 6:14 PM EST

    3m after posting

    Step 02
  3. 03Peak activity

    137 comments in Day 1

    Hottest window of the conversation

    Step 03
  4. 04Latest activity

    Nov 8, 2025 at 11:38 AM EST

    17 days ago

    Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (438 comments)
Showing 160 comments of 438
haunter
21 days ago
5 replies
Video of the crash, left (?) engine was already engulfed in flames while taking off

https://x.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930

https://xcancel.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930

Edit: just the mp4 https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1985845862409334784/pu/...

There is an incredible amount of ground damage! Just wow, this is very bad https://files.catbox.moe/3303ob.jpg

justsid
21 days ago
5 replies
The damage on the ground is scary to look at. I think the only silver lining here is that it was "just" a sparser industrial area and there weren't any homes. I'm really curious about what the investigation will reveal in a few months. This doesn't look like a "regular" engine fire from a bird strike or so, you would normally expect the flames to come out the back and not over the wing. And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines, although flames on a wing is probably "really really bad" just by itself already. Too early to speculate about what happened though.
Jtsummers
21 days ago
3 replies
> And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with just two engines

Flying with two engines and taking off without an engine in a loaded aircraft are two very different things. A lot more thrust is needed during takeoff than after.

andy99
21 days ago
2 replies
I specifically remember watching a flight test doing an aggressive takeoff and having the voiceover say that aircraft (two engine) need to have enough power to take off full with one engine. And so can take off very steeply empty with two engines. Would that not also be the case for these planes?
justsid
21 days ago
2 replies
Yes, planes are designed to be able to take off with a lost engine. Usually this will extend the roll a bit because the speeds are different for engine out operations. This isn't the first MD-11 with an engine out take off, 5 years ago a FedEx MD-11 took off with a failure in the left engine[1]. Slightly different case, obviously, but it's certainly something that is accounted for when designing planes.

[1] https://www.avherald.com/h?article=4dfd50b9&opt=0%20

bobthepanda
21 days ago
1 reply
That being said, depending on how you lose the engine it can really mess up the takeoff; AA191 was lost when an engine detached from the plane on takeoff and took out part of the wing and hydraulic system with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191
anonymars
21 days ago
> when an engine detached from the plane on takeoff...

https://imgur.com/a/NYlrLYO

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/757091156717862935/14...

Source: https://reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1ooms7t/ksdf_accident/n...

rob74
20 days ago
Yes, the takeoff roll will be longer, the climb will be much more shallow, but it is possible to take off with one out of two engines (and obviously also with two out of three). Of course, after successful takeoff, the plane should turn around and land as soon as possible.

In this case however, with the wing already on fire (the engine is below the wing, so flames coming out of it would be visible behind and under the wing, not in front), I'm afraid that even if they had managed to take off, the fuel tank would have exploded or burned through the wing before they would have had a chance to land. Actually, this looks similar to the 2000 Concorde crash...

appreciatorBus
21 days ago
2 replies
All planes are definitely capable of taking off safely even if they lose an engine at the worst time. Whatever happened here, I would be shocked if lack of thrust in the 2 remaining engines was a significant factor unless someone really screwed up the load calculations and they were overweight for conditions.
lazide
20 days ago
1 reply
Single engine planes (GA, and some military planes) don’t handle this condition well at all.

In fact, for awhile (maybe still the case), the #1 killer of skydivers was single engine failure on takeoff from the jump plane (and similar aircraft failures), not accidents ‘while skydiving’.

appreciatorBus
19 days ago
yes true, I guess I was assuming we were talking about commercial airlines :)
dboreham
21 days ago
Lack of thrust in the "taken out by debris" sense seems to be the case here.
avalys
21 days ago
2 replies
Every multi-engine airliner is designed to be able to take off safely even if an engine fails at a critical moment. What might have happened in this case is that the mechanism of failure of one engine caused damaged or interfered with the operation of another engine (via smoke, debris, etc.), and taking off with two engines degraded is not part of the design criteria.
HPsquared
20 days ago
Some engine failures can't be contained within the cowling, like turbine disc rupture. Probably something like this happened where fragments punctured the surrounding wing structure and/or fuel tanks.
pixl97
20 days ago
I do think 'engine fails' and 'engine has left the building' are two different categories of problems. Even if the rear engine was working I'm going to assume this craft would have crashed, probably just farther down range.
filleduchaos
21 days ago
1 reply
Taking off with one engine inoperative (on a multi-engine aircraft, obviously - you aren't going to get anywhere with your only engine gone) is completely normal/within design parameters, albeit undesirable.

In fact, it being normal almost certainly contributed to the scale of this accident, since a single engine failure during the takeoff roll isn't considered enough of an emergency to reject the takeoff at high speed (past a certain speed, you only abort if the aircraft is literally unflyable - for everything else, you take the aircraft & emergency into the air and figure it out there). The crew wouldn't have had any way to know that one of their engines had not simply failed, but was straight-up gone with their wing on fire to boot.

Jtsummers
21 days ago
4 replies
> The crew wouldn't have had any way to know that one of their engines had not simply failed, but was straight-up gone with their wing on fire to boot.

I don't know about the MD-11 itself, but other aircraft from that time period have sensors to detect and report overheat and fire in various parts of the aircraft, including engines and wings.

positron26
21 days ago
2 replies
This puts an impractical amount of faith in the sensor wiring when the whole pylon and cowling are shredded.
Jtsummers
21 days ago
1 reply
I don't know what the MD-11 would have had, again I didn't work on it. But the systems used for other aircraft would have reported an alarm based on what I saw in the video, at least they were designed to do that. The LRU receiving the sensor inputs wouldn't typically be in the wing and would be able to continue reporting the alarm condition even if the sensors fail. In fact, the lack of current from the sensor (for the systems I worked on) would have been enough to trigger the alarm if the sensor were completely eliminated.
positron26
21 days ago
No reading is not quite the same as "hot", but I'm sure it did contribute to discerning simple compressor stall to whatever this was.
krisoft
20 days ago
It is a very practical amount of fait.

There are two fire detection loops for each engine.[1] Even if both fails (because they get shredded as you say it) the system will report an engine fire if the two loops fail within 5s of each other. (Or FIRE DET (1,2,3,or APU) FAIL, if they got shredded with more than 5s in between without any fire indications in between.)

The detection logic is implemented directly below the cockpit. So that unlikely to have shredded at the same time. But even if the detection logic would have died that would also result in a fire alarm. (as we learned from the March 31, 2002 Charlotte incident.)[2]

In other words it is a very reliable system.

1: page 393 https://randomflightdatabase.fr/Documents/Manuel%20Aviation/...

2: https://www.fss.aero/accident-reports/dvdfiles/US/2002-03-31...

filleduchaos
21 days ago
2 replies
Well, there's a very big difference between "Engine fire: some of the combustion chamber's heat and flame has breached containment" and, say, "Engine fire: the engine has exploded, catastrophically damaging your wing which is now visibly on fire". However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG FIRE.

There's also a very big difference between "Engine failure: something has damaged or jammed enough components that the turbines are no longer spinning fast enough to produce thrust or drive the generators" and "Engine failure: the engine is no longer attached to the aircraft, which is why it is no longer producing thrust". However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG FAIL.

(Un)fortunately, cockpit warnings prioritise the what (so to speak) and not the how or why. On one hand, this makes decision-making a lot simpler for the crew, but on the other...well, in rare cases the lack of insight can exacerbate a disaster. Depending on when exactly the engine gave out, this poor crew might have been doomed either way, but they might have been able to minimise collateral damage if they knew just how badly crippled the aircraft was. And there was a very similar accident to this one (actually involving the predecessor of the MD-11, the DC-10), American Airlines 191 - one of the engines detached from the aircraft, damaging the leading edge of its wing in the process, causing that wing to stall when the crew slowed down below the stall speed of the damaged wing in a bid to climb. If they could have somehow known about the damage, the accident might have been avoided entirely as the crew might have known to keep their speed up.

eternityforest
20 days ago
2 replies
Could they add cameras to solve this issue?
roryirvine
20 days ago
1 reply
During engine failure / fire situations, I would expect that pilots are likely to be too busy to have any time left over for peering at a video feed, trying to assess the state of the wing.

In emergencies, information overload tends to make things worse, not better.

ExoticPearTree
20 days ago
3 replies
Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview mirrors would be helpful. It does not add that much workload if you take a quick glance in the “mirror” and figure out what the problem exactly is.

And now we have technology that allows for cameras everywhere to give a better situational awareness across all critical aircraft surfaces and systems.

It is going to take a little bit of adjusting to, but it will help improve safety in a tremendous way.

cedilla
20 days ago
This would need to be tested. There's a lot going on already during normal take-offs. Now you're in a situation where the engine fire alarm is going off, probably a few other alarms, you got so many messages on your display that it only shows the most urgent one, you're taking quick glances at 50 points in the cockpit already.

And how would the cameras even work? Are the pilots supposed to switch between multiple camera feeds, or do we install dozens of screens? And then what, they see lots of black smoke on one camera, does that really tell them that much more than the ENG FIRE alert blaring in the background?

Maybe this could help during stable flight, but in this situation, when the pilots were likely already overloaded and probably had only a few seconds to escape this situation - if it was possible at all - I can't imagine it being helpful.

krisoft
20 days ago
> Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview mirrors would be helpful.

Helpful in what way? What are the pilots going to do with the information?

HeyLaughingBoy
18 days ago
How does that work in the dark/rain/snow? Or are we now going to add lights pointing in the direction where the camera is facing. And then what do we do about the fact that aircraft external lighting has to follow regulations?
zuppy
20 days ago
1 reply
They surely can and this has been done. On one the flights that I took with Turkish Airlines they had a few video streams from different sides of the airplane. One was from the top of the tail and you could see the entire plane.

Now... not sure how much that is helpful in this kind of emergency, they really didn't have time to do much.

fredoralive
20 days ago
I'm not sure they usually have the views on screen in the cockpit in flight, even if available (and an old MD-11 freighter won't have the cameras in the first place). The picture of an A380 cockpit (on the ground) on Wikipedia does show the tail view on a screen, but its on the screen normally used for main instruments. With an A380 that had an uncontained engine failure causing various bits of havok (Qantas 32?) IIRC the passengers could see a fuel leak on the in flight entertainment screens, but they had to tell the crew as AFAIK they didn't have access to the view in the cockpit in flight.
ragazzina
20 days ago
5 replies
> There's also a very big difference between "Engine failure: something has damaged or jammed enough components that the turbines are no longer spinning fast enough to produce thrust or drive the generators" and "Engine failure: the engine is no longer attached to the aircraft, which is why it is no longer producing thrust". However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG FAIL.

What is the difference?

HPsquared
20 days ago
1 reply
Wider effects like damage to the wing or changes to aerodynamics.

Edit: and damage to other engines, possibly engine #2 in the tail ingesting debris in this instance.

bombcar
20 days ago
2 replies
That's the biggest, the weight gone entirely unbalances the plane; if you knew exactly what happened you MIGHT be able to keep it level (and it seems they did for a bit) but eventually airspeed drops, it tips, and cartwheels (which is apparently what it did from the videos).
beerandt
20 days ago
Deadweight or no-weight engine is a relatively negligible problem in terms of the weight-balance envelope.

Cut fuel & hydraulic lines near that engine (that affect the other engines/ apus) (or less likely structural or aerodynamic problems) is what's going to shift this from "engine failure" recoverable problem to a global nonrecoverable one.

Modified3019
20 days ago
The aircraft hit the roof of a UPS warehouse, barely clearing it before coming down in the parking lot/junkyard nearby. So when we see it turning over in its last seconds (like the trucker dash cam video), it only had one wing at that point.
mvkel
20 days ago
It's the difference between "I can't walk because my leg fell asleep"

and

"I can't walk because I have no legs"

tzs
20 days ago
A good example of the difference it can make was the Flight 191 crash in Chicago in in 1979, which had an engine come off on takeoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191

The engine coming completely off tore through hydraulic lines, which were need to keep the slats extended. Airflow forced the slats to retract.

Here's what then happened:

> As the aircraft had reached V1, the crew was committed to takeoff, so they followed standard procedures for an engine-out situation. This procedure is to climb at the takeoff safety airspeed (V2) and attitude (angle), as directed by the flight director. The partial electrical power failure, produced by the separation of the left engine, meant that neither the stall warning nor the slat retraction indicator was operative. Therefore, the crew did not know that the slats on the left wing were retracting. This retraction significantly raised the stall speed of the left wing. Thus, flying at the takeoff safety airspeed caused the left wing to stall while the right wing was still producing lift, so the aircraft banked sharply and uncontrollably to the left. Simulator recreations after the accident determined that "had the pilot maintained excess airspeed the accident may not have occurred.

singleshot_
20 days ago
Hydraulic pressure
potato3732842
20 days ago
>What is the difference?

Wanting to be in the air vs wanting to over-run the end of the runway.

kelnos
20 days ago
1 reply
I think too many of us are used to movies and TV (and Star-Trek-like scifi) that gives the incorrect view that extremely detailed information about the state of things is available.

The notification in the cockpit is likely nothing more than "ENG 2 FIRE" or similar. That could mean anything from "the fire is minor enough and we're at high enough speed that it's significantly safer to take off and then make an emergency landing", to "the engine has exploded and the wing is on fire and catastrophically damaged, so even though aborting takeoff now is dangerous and will likely cause us to overrun the runway, trying to continue would be worse".

It's a judgment call by the pilot to guess which of these is the case (or any possibility in between), and given the probabilities of various failure modes, I think it's fair for a pilot to assume it's something closer to the former than the latter.

Jtsummers
20 days ago
> I think too many of us are used to movies and TV (and Star-Trek-like scifi) that gives the incorrect view that extremely detailed information about the state of things is available.

What a strange comment. I never made any such statement or claim that a science-fantasy level of technology would exist in a decades old aircraft or any aircraft.

I was responding to someone who made the absurd claim that the pilots wouldn't be informed of a fire on the wing, when in fact they would be informed of that (which you seem to agree with). So what's Star Trek got to do with anything?

appreciatorBus
21 days ago
I’m sure they knew there was an issue, but I don’t think the sensors can differentiate between “your engine is on fire, but if you can shut it down quickly, everything will be cool.” and “half your entire wing is on fire and your engine is pouring flame out the front/top instead of the back”
roygbiv2
21 days ago
2 replies
Looks like a compressor stall on number two engine two seconds into the video.
appreciatorBus
21 days ago
1 reply
I don’t know, that looks like a lot more than just a stall. There was a ton of flame that looked like it was coming out of the front or top of the engine, rather than just something shooting out the back.
loeg
21 days ago
3 replies
I think you're looking at the left wing (number 1) engine; GP is talking about either the tail or right wing engine. (I think tail is number 2 on MD-11.) There's a brief explosion visible through the smoke at about 1-2 seconds in, to the right of the engine visibly on fire; that's probably what he's talking about.

Freeze frame: https://imgur.com/a/c3h8Qd3

FabHK
21 days ago
1 reply
And having 2 out of 3 engines fail (or underperform) would explain the insufficient climb thrust.
loeg
21 days ago
Right!
appreciatorBus
21 days ago
Yup makes sense. Now seeing photos of the entire left engine on the ground by the runway and the implication that however it failed it might have damaged the tail engine.
positron26
20 days ago
Agree, looks like an engine disruption.

The rotation already exacerbates the flow into that engine. Change in flow geometry gets more smoke in its way when it's already eating turbulent air.

We don't know if it just had a disruption or a full-blown stall, but give the way it made it to takeoff speed and then just gave out, stall seems likely.

CPLX
21 days ago
1 reply
I would say it does not, in fact, look like a compressor stall. It looks very much like an uncontained disassembly, presumably from fan blades that suffered a catastrophic failure and broke up in a way that exceeded the limits of the engine's containment.

Obviously impossible to tell from some cell phone type videos. Being struck by something is also possible. But it sure does look like an uncontained engine failure.

loeg
21 days ago
I think you're looking at engine number 1, while GP is talking about engine 2.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818448

JCM9
20 days ago
9 replies
Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an airport that has a high density of people, precisely to limit casualties during an event like this. Industrial would be permitted while residential and commercial use is not.

Scarily there are communities that have ignored such logic and permitted dense residential development right next to an airport.

ChrisMarshallNY
20 days ago
2 replies
> Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an airport that has a high density of people

Queens, NY has entered the chat…

chronciger
20 days ago
1 reply
>Queens, NY has entered the chat…

You’re correct, but at least LaGuardia airport generally has takeoffs over water.

LaGuardia aircraft landings may happen over dense apartment buildings, but less likely for catastrophic damage (glide path, less fuel, engines are <10% throttle, etc)

ChrisMarshallNY
20 days ago
It also has JFK, on the South side.
globular-toast
20 days ago
Some of the larger townships in Cape Town are right in the flight path too. Not many white people there either.
Thorrez
20 days ago
1 reply
Probably also due to noise.
SilasX
20 days ago
Yeah I was going to say, that sounds like a much more salient reason not to live near an airport than the possibility of that rare crash.
potato3732842
20 days ago
1 reply
You can always come up with some pretext to justify things by ignoring the other side of the equation.

How many lives do the man hours spent commuting, or toiling away to afford higher rents waste?

IDK how the math pencils out, but an attempt ought to be made before drawing conclusions.

Retric
20 days ago
7 replies
None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing. The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water often by building airports on reclaimed land.

What generally gets areas in trouble is locations that used to be a good get worse as aircraft get larger and the surroundings get built up. The solution is to send larger airplanes to a new airport, but it’s not free and there’s no clear line when things get unacceptably dangerous.

gwbas1c
20 days ago
2 replies
> The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water.

That works in costal areas, but not inland.

There's no large body of water near the Louisville airport.

Retric
20 days ago
3 replies
The Ohio River is a large body of water fairly close if someone was going to relocate Louisville airport.
WorldMaker
20 days ago
2 replies
The Ohio River is a mile wide at Louisville, but that still doesn't wide enough to classify it "large body of water", especially because it is a river that moves relatively quick for its width and then hits falls/rapids just downstream of Louisville.

But also there's a lot of urban and suburban development you'd have to displace to even consider moving the airport near the Ohio River for most miles both up and down stream of Louisville.

Retric
20 days ago
1 reply
Tradeoffs. Physical land under the airport is lost either way, but land near the old airport becomes more useful where the river itself couldn’t have buildings in either situation. Thus moving it near a river or other large body of water is a long term net gain.

As to a crash, ditching into an industrial area isn’t significantly worse for the passengers than ditching into a set of rapids, but the rapids are far better for the general public.

WorldMaker
20 days ago
To be fair to this specific airport, the industrial area South of the airport is almost entirely UPS Airlines facilities. The safety hazard posed by the UPS Airlines flight crash was primarily to UPS Airlines warehouses and warehouse workers. They made their own tradeoffs in this case of what they placed close to their own runways (including apparently they had a fuel recycling plant not far from the crash line that made firefighting more complicated). Sure it's still very different from a large body of water, but it's also certainly not like the land was entirely a general usage industrial area either.

Had the crash happened in a different direction there might be other complaints, sure, but even airports with large bodies of water neighboring them only generally neighbor a side or two.

johann8384
20 days ago
It's not even a mile wide here. The widest spot I measured just east of the falls was 0.75, at Utica it is 0.34 and at Westport it's 0.39.
gwbas1c
19 days ago
1 reply
That's a thimble: When I zoomed out on the map the airport was huge and the river just a few pixels wide. Otherwise I wouldn't have made the comment I made.
Retric
19 days ago
Airports are far larger than aircraft, which enter and leave from the end of runways.

Rivers have a nice property where they tend to be the lowest thing around because water flows downhill and are quite long. For approaches from other directions half the time you end up crossing the river at some angle which acts as a buffer zone, thus reducing the total land lost as a buffer zone.

mywittyname
20 days ago
I don't think effectively damming (alternatively, rerouting) the Ohio River is a solution to relocating an airport in Louisville. That's a wildly ambitious undertaking compared to most other land reclamation projects.

Yeah, the terrain around Louisville poses a challenge for placing an airport, but they could do like Cincinnati does, and have their airport located across the river. Or place it between Frankfurt and Louisville. Or do like Pittsburg and make the terrain flat enough for an international airport.

wongarsu
20 days ago
Inland it can work if you have a river. London City Airport would be an example
Arainach
20 days ago
2 replies
>None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing.

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

It's hard to project growth. Things build right up to the limit of the airport for convenient access, then the area grows and the airport needs to grow - and what do you do? Seattle-Tacoma is critically undersized for the traffic it gets and has been struggling with the fact that there's physically nowhere to expand to.

Retric
20 days ago
3 replies
Zoning is one option to direct growth, but you can move airports. Chicago is right next to a Great Lake and there’s relatively shallow areas ready to be reclaimed etc.

Obviously you’re better off making such decisions early rather than building a huge airport only to abandon it. Thus it’s called urban planning not urban triage.

Arainach
20 days ago
1 reply
Move them to where? Cities large enough to merit an airport generally either have development which has expanded around them or physical features not conducive to development (mountains, lakes, etc.).

It's easy to say "just build bigger elsewhere" but unless you go dozens of miles out and add hours to every trip to/from the airport there's no options.

And no, "just fill in every body of water" is not an option. It doesn't work at all in many cases, is hilariously expensive in all cases, and has enormous environmental impact.

Retric
20 days ago
I’m specifically suggesting using reclaimed land if they relocated the airport because the cost seems to work out for Chicago, though obviously an in depth analysis is necessary. Still just looking at the depths combined with lakes not having the downsides of open oceans makes it promising. Unfortunately we’re talking about a huge airport so moving anywhere gets incredibly expensive.

The ultimate reason so many cities use land reclamation for airports is open water does not lose property value by being near the airport. Thus a given greater metropolitan area regains not just the physical land of the airport but the increased property value from all that land that’s no longer next to an airport.

DiggyJohnson
20 days ago
There’s a real convenience to an airport not being 50 minutes away
potato3732842
20 days ago
>Zoning is one option to direct growth

My magic crystal ball named "the past 50yr of history" says it is unlikely to be the success you envision.

eitally
20 days ago
Congonhas (the original Sao Paulo airport) is right in the middle of the city.

There was a significant crash there in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054

nostrademons
20 days ago
3 replies
San Jose does. You can, in theory, walk to downtown from the airport; it's about an hour and a half via pedestrian trail:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zhZdA5tWGAKunM2e8

(This is widely considered a misfeature of San Jose - it limits the height of buildings in downtown San Jose to 10 stories because the downtown is directly under the flight path of arriving flights, it limits runway length and airport expansion, and it means that planes and their noise fly directly over key tourist attractions like the Rose Garden and Convention Center. If we ever had a major plane crash like this one in San Jose it would be a disaster, because the airport is bounded by 101 on the north, 880 on the south, the arriving flight path goes right over downtown, and the departing flight path goes right over Levi's Stadium, Great America, and several office buildings.)

Retric
20 days ago
1 reply
There’s roughly a mile of roads, green spaces, and river between the airport and downtown San Jose which an absolutely identical accident would impact. It’s not very wide, but pilots aren’t going to aim for buildings if they can help it.

So while downtown being in the flight path is a risk there was some method to the madness which caused that alignment.

jonas21
20 days ago
2 replies
San Diego's airport, on the other hand, has the a bustling restaurant district, an interstate with frequent bumper-to-bumper traffic, and a dense residential neighborhood all within a mile off one end of the runway -- and a popular shopping area, an elementary school, and a high school within just over a mile from the other end.

In addition, the terrain rises in both directions (so sharply on one side that planes can't use ILS when landing from that direction).

DiggyJohnson
20 days ago
The fact that San Diego operates essentially downtown with a single runway is a marvel, even if it does cause issues. I hope they get the tram extension one day.
Retric
20 days ago
Agreed, and clearly there’s a bunch of much safer options. The north island air station base is close and almost comically better.
bdamm
20 days ago
San Jose Airport's walkability and bikability is actually wonderful and I always take the opportunity to walk or bike there when flying into SJC.
Johnny555
20 days ago
The Las Vegas Airport is very close to the strip, surrounded by residential neighborhoods and hotels about 1/4 - 1/2 mile from the airport, and UNLV university is about 1000 feet in a straight line from one of the runways.
ilamont
20 days ago
1 reply
> Nobody puts airports inside city centers

Taipei Songshan, Boston Logan and the old Hong Kong Kai Tak to name a few.

Retric
20 days ago
1 reply
Boston Logan is surrounded by water to the point only one end of a single runway isn’t aimed directly at water soon crosses water. The city center requires crossing a bridge. Taipei is a little worse but its only runway is going next to a river here and aimed at a park on each side.

Hong Kong Kai Take would be a solid example except it closed in 1998 because of how the city grew. Look at maps from 1950 and it doesn’t look like a bad location for a small airport.

ilamont
20 days ago
> The city center requires crossing a bridge.

It actually requires using tunnels or a boat. I used to drive a cab and the I93 + Callahan/Sumner tunnel route was hellish. The Big Dig helped a lot, although sometimes that can get pretty backed up too.

> Look at maps from 1950 and it doesn’t look like a bad location for a small airport.

Generally, airports that are close to major urban centers were developed prior to 1950, including all 3 examples named. Songshan was opened during Taiwan's colonial period as the “Matsuyama Airdrome” serving Japanese military flights (https://www.sups.tp.edu.tw/tsa/en/1-1.htm).

For bigger cities with these old central airports, larger airports were opened later in many cases. I don't think that will ever happen in Boston, although satellite airports in neighboring states like "Manchester-Boston" or TF Greene in Rhode Island try pretty hard.

vel0city
20 days ago
> Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing

Ever see Dallas Love Field?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/A94EdexYwfpyeMxa7

Lots of airports are pretty much immediately adjacent to their city centers.

alexjplant
19 days ago
I live in San Diego and can watch planes come and go from my apartment rooftop. I've also walked to and from the airport to stretch my legs before and after flights.

Somewhere I have a GoPro video of me on my motorcycle waiting for a freight train at a crossing in traffic while a 747 flies overhead ("Planes, Trains, and Automobiles"). It's a pretty transportation-dense area.

matt-p
20 days ago
In all honesty most countries in europe have at least one airport in a city centre. I mean look at lisbon, RKV, BHD/LCY (even glasgow,LHR to some extent), BMA, NCE.
Moto7451
20 days ago
5 replies
Jets are also simply too loud for homes under the takeoff path in standard use. There’s what amounts to a ghost town next to LAX due to this and the history of the airport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_del_Rey,_California

Burbank Airport has quiet hours and has left a bunch of commercially zoned area under that takeoff path.

I’m in Atlanta now and they bought up a lot of land around the airport when redeveloping it and do similar zoning tricks for the buffer. One of the buffer zones is the Porsche Experience. It’s loud as heck when you’re on the part of the track closest but not bad where the corporate HQ and paddock is

duped
20 days ago
1 reply
Meanwhile, ORD is surrounded by residential areas and they're building a new tollway perpendicular to the runways
caseyohara
20 days ago
2 replies
MDW immediately came to mind as an airport closely surrounded by neighborhoods. I've always wondered what it's like to live in one of those neighborhoods. Is it a perpetual nuisance or do you get used to it?
tharkun__
20 days ago
Not at MDW but there are plenty such places and yes, some people do "get used to it". But there are studies that show that you increase health risks from such levels of noise even if you get used enough to it so that you can sleep through them. Search for increases in problems of cardiovascular health from car and plane noise.

And some people just won't really get used to it. I've lived near airplane noise and I never got used to it. I also don't sleep better with white noise. I sleep worse.

mindcrime
19 days ago
First time I was ever on a flight that landed at Midway, I was pretty freaked out by the visuals as we were descending. It's like ... "we're going to land on a house... we're going to Land On A House... we're going to LAND ON A HOUSE!! ... OMG, there's a runway <phew>".
tharkun__
20 days ago
1 reply
I just looked that up (Atlanta) on https://noise-map.com/ and man, that's way not enough zoning tricking in my book. Not that it's much different in other cities (or countries).
alright2565
19 days ago
There's no need to zone for airport noise in Atlanta because the highway passing through the city center and hotrodded cars already are much louder and more disruptive in practice. I wish I was joking.

Also, the map you're looking at there is relatively low resolution. I would suggest looking at it in https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/; make sure to switch the "Modes:" to "All Modes"

fortran77
20 days ago
I grew up 3 miles (as the crow flies) from JFK Runway 31 R / 13 L in Cedarhurst, New York

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Cedarhurst,+NY+11516/John+F....

jcurbo
20 days ago
That's wild, I was in LA recently for work and drove by that area and wondered what was up with the street grid. I figured it must be something like this given the airport.
themadturk
18 days ago
I recently toured SEA. The third (western-most) runway there is too close to homes to use regularly for takeoffs due to noise. Though the FAA has made the Port of Seattle no promises, they apparently do tend to use the third runway as much as possible for landings only, and not late at night as much as possible.
pksebben
20 days ago
1 reply
Fresno here. If this had happened at FAT (FYI now? We have dumb names) the casualties would've easily hit three digits from initial impact, and then whatever else burned afterwards because CA==tinderbox.
eitally
20 days ago
Same with SJC, no matter which direction they were taking off.
silisili
20 days ago
2 replies
UPS actually bought and destroyed thousands of homes near their end of the airport about 20 years ago, under the guise of 'noise', but realistically for expansion of warehousing. Now, I guess I feel slightly less upset by that (my childhood home was one of them).
Ferret7446
19 days ago
1 reply
Both can be true at the same time (or all three if you include safety in addition to noise).
silisili
19 days ago
1 reply
True, but rather doubtful. UPS has owned that part of the airport for longer than I've been alive. As a kid, yeah sometimes a plane comes over but nobody really seemed to care.

Fast fwd 15 years and now the city is telling us how unsafe it is to live there, passing out studies about how airplane noise will ruin your life, etc. And they made the buyout 'optional', knowing they'd railroad the holdouts, which they did. They'd tear down every house and the road leading to your house as they went, until the holdouts gave in.

All of a sudden my neighborhood is gone. And that awful, noisy, unsafe to live in place...is full of workers in cheap steel warehouses. I guess it's more safe for them.

Many people may not realize, but UPS and Ford absolutely own Louisville. If either says jump, the city government will ask how high?

jacquesm
19 days ago
1 reply
> Fast fwd 15 years and now the city is telling us how unsafe it is to live there

I think their point just got made in a way that can't be ignored.

silisili
19 days ago
1 reply
Fair point!

Oddly enough the pamphlets they kept sending out focused on irritability, poor grades, confusion, sleep problems, etc, and never mentioned the possibility of being fragged by a wayward jet.

I say that only partially in jest, looking at a map now, we were only 2 or so miles as the crow flies from the end of their runway and in the direct path..

jacquesm
19 days ago
On a long enough timescale even improbably things will happen. The pamphlets would not mention that possibility because that would imply that the operator thought that a crash was possible, which would have caused their whole operation to be reviewed. By pointing out all but that, and by focusing on things that they could point at without having proof that living in the path of an active runway is risky (it is, take-off and landing are the most risky phases of flight) they were trying to get their way and check off a possible future headline without being seen as alarmist or engaging in risky behavior.

I'm trying to imagine this same thing happening with a subdivision in the same location where this plane crashed and the headlines that would have generated. As bad as this is, that alternative disaster would have been on an entirely different level.

I also hope that as a result of this crash there will be a global review of the placing of airports, especially the ones that are pretty much in cities with the flight path directly over houses during final approach and just after take-off.

This is a good example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiPyrfEuOeo

And yes, they're space constrained. But, given enough time...

xhkkffbf
17 days ago
Same thing happened to a friend who lived near the Albany airport. They gave him some song and dance about how it wasn't safe for people. But then after the deal was all done, they ended up selling the land to one of those hotel companies that wanted to have 100+ people sleep there each night. But they weren't permanent residents so it was different.
rpcope1
20 days ago
It's amazing that towns don't see this sort of thing and think "huh maybe it's not a good idea to put apartments right on top of an airport", but I guess they don't. Longmont is in trouble with the FAA because they OKed a bunch of apartments right at the end of Vance Brand that would be right in the path of aircraft struggling to gain altitude out of the airport. Naturally there's a vocal contingent of people around here that think this is the airport's problem and not the town or greedy developers, and that all the airports (except DIA) should be shut down.
andrepd
20 days ago
The pollution and noise probably has health effects many times more significant than the sum of extremely rare crashes like these.
pkulak
20 days ago
Midway comes to mind: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GRUXJVdUPQMWkZNU6
imglorp
20 days ago
1 reply
An accident on takeoff means full tanks - some 38000 gallons(?) spread along the site like a napalm strike.
wlesieutre
20 days ago
1 reply
A particularly large amount of fuel because it was flying to Honolulu
WorldMaker
20 days ago
A particularly large amount of fuel also because it was loaded with heavy cargo intended to make it all the way to Honolulu.
alchemism
20 days ago
The ground damage in the recent North Philadelphia Airport crash was only due to a chartered jet, but it practically wiped out a residential city block.
anonymars
21 days ago
3 replies
The second video here shows an incredibly close view of the impact from a nearby dashcam.

https://www.wdrb.com/news/ups-plane-catches-fire-and-explode...

> There is an incredible amount of ground damage!

It's fortunate it wasn't taking off the other direction, towards the adjacent downtown of Louisville (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Louisville+International+A...)

The_President
20 days ago
1 reply
News site - video obfuscated.
anonymars
20 days ago
1 reply
I would say it's easy to see the list of videos with no undue nonsense, the list is augmented as new footage is available, it contains more context on the accident (also augmented with subsequent information), and the local news deserves the traffic more than twitter
The_President
20 days ago
Linking to raw video directly is a more efficient use of time.
rodface
21 days ago
That is an incredible video.
caminanteblanco
20 days ago
For anyone uninterested in the associated newscast, the footage begins at 5:24
tonmoy
20 days ago
From what I read they engine caught fire right after they hit V1, so basically the only option was to take off and solve the problem in the air
toomuchtodo
21 days ago
UPS2976

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/UPS2976

guerrilla
20 days ago
Oh wow...
octaane
21 days ago
1 reply
This is probably the worst way a plane could go down in terms of damage caused. Maximum effect in term of damage. Cargo plane apparently reached V1 (go/no go speed) on the runway, and suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They passed V1, so they knew they were going down. Engine was shedding large debris, including the housing (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.

They were on fire just as they reached V1.

Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight to hawaii. Worst case scenario.

Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead at 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else, instead of go beyond the runway at that speed. Accelerating a fully loaded jet plane at ground level beyond the runway has obvious consequences. They had one choice.

Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low, they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by before this, footage shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground like a mousetrap by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.

Physics took over. Plane flipped and rolled upon loss of port wing, smearing a rolling fireball of the remaining fuel load from the starboard wing for another half a mile.

Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.

Respect to the flight crew; rest in peace, they made the best they could out of a really shitty scenario. They flew it all the way down.

Footage:

https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1985845987684855969?s=46

https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985849267152699741?s=46

https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985848132500885995?s=46

https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985843126934614297?s=46

gizmo686
21 days ago
4 replies
> they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway at ground level

Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this, and breaking failures following landings.

octaane
21 days ago
2 replies
Unless you have a berm several dozen meters high with a 100 meter base, you ain't stopping something like this from a physics standpoint unfortunately.

Many airports have this problem. The recent korean air disaster which echos this is another example. BTW, this is why most airports, if possible, point out to sea...

positron26
21 days ago
4 replies
There is a dead zone between rejection and successful take-off speeds. We see it hit too often.

I think pilot training is playing a factor. A normal rotation kills too much energy. One engine can climb when you have some airspeed and get clean, but if you lose too much energy on rotation, the inefficiency of the AoA for the rest of the short flight means that engine can no longer buy you any up. I've seen too many single-engine planes going down while trying to pitch up the whole way down.

So, less aggressive single-engine rotations and energy absorbers at the ends of runways that can't get longer. This seems like the kind of thing where we do it because it removes a significant cause of people dying.

Just watched this angle a few more times: https://x.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930

Another crash video shows the aircraft clearly descending before colliding with anything. It manages to go up a bit, so it's fast enough to get airborne. The normal looking rotation kills too much energy. The plane is then too inefficient to maintain speed. AoA goes up while energy goes down. Power available goes negative and then it's over.

bigbadfeline
21 days ago
1 reply
> It manages to go up a bit, so it's fast enough to get airborne. The normal looking rotation kills too much energy.

Yes, it did get airborne for a few seconds but from the video below, it looks like the left wing was damaged by the fire and could not provide enough lift, then the right wing rolled the plane to the left causing the crash.

https://bsky.app/profile/shipwreck75.bsky.social/post/3m4tvh...

positron26
21 days ago
1 reply
> looks like the left wing was damaged by the fire

The wings and aerodynamics don't really care if air or air with combustion are flowing around them.

Roll is a consequence of the loss of control due to low speed and the yaw of the good engines. Speed up, rudder works, plane might maintain positive climb.

loeg
20 days ago
1 reply
> The wings and aerodynamics don't really care if air or air with combustion are flowing around them.

Not saying it's what happened here, but if the heat is intense enough to deform the wing / control surfaces, it matters.

positron26
20 days ago
1 reply
For skin, a few seconds might be significant. For the spars, not nearly enough time to matter. It's also not at cruise speed slamming into a downdraft or anything. This is about a 1G loading. Negligible for a while. While the fire looks cool, there's a lot of free stream mixing in and the temps won't really get that high beyond the cowling.
SAI_Peregrinus
20 days ago
More likely is the hydraulics on that side burst, leading to a loss of pressure keeping the control surfaces deployed. If that lead to the leading-edge slats retracting (like they did in AA 191) you'd get a massive loss of lift on that side. The structural parts of the wing didn't have time to melt, but the fire certainly could damage all the internal control materials.
LgWoodenBadger
20 days ago
1 reply
Increased thrust requirements for airliners that force planes to hit an increased v1 (or whatever it's called) sooner on the runway to allow for more time to reject takeoff.
arcfour
19 days ago
That's going to be difficult to balance with emissions requirements.
brazzy
20 days ago
There might be other kinds of damage where the quicker altitude gain of a normal rotation is crucial for survival.

I'm skeptical whether pilots can realistically make this kind of decision, given that they have no more than a few seconds to make it, and in cases such as this based on very incomplete information about the state of their aircraft.

mannykannot
21 days ago
Rotation does increase drag, but you need to rotate in order to achieve the necessary angle of attack. The only way to reduce the rotation angle is by going faster than the normal rotation speed for the given weight and airfield density altitude, but doing so is out of the question in this scenario.
wickberg
21 days ago
Newer airports usually try to have space, that's the only thing helping with the physics involved here.

Older airports might have EMAS [1] retrofitted at the ends to help stop planes, but that's designed more for a landing plane not stopping quickly enough (like [2]) - not a plane trying to get airborne as in this case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1248

topspin
21 days ago
1 reply
> Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing.

Some do. Here is what it looks like when an overshooting plane utilizes such a barrier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW71FrX8t_g

179 dead.

Consider the possibility that gigantic flying aluminum tubes filled with tons of flammable fuel hurtling around at hundreds of kilometers per hour comprise a dilemma that has no trivial answers. Even defining what "important thing" means at any given instant is not straightforward.

beAbU
20 days ago
There is a spectrum between "no barrier" and "immovable barrier".

Arrestor beds exist, and given enough space a fully loaded plane at take-off velocity can be stopped in a controlled and safe way.

Cost and space are often the reason why this does not happen.

TylerE
21 days ago
1 reply
Security/debris fencing yes, but that's like, orders of magnitude short of what would stop the amount of energy we're talking about here.

You also don't particularly want it to be catastrophically effective as there are real world cases where planes have clipped the fence and then NOT gone on to crash, or at least to crash in a fairly controlled manner with the majority onboard surviving. Hitting a brick wall at 180mph is going to have a 0% survival rate.

namibj
21 days ago
Yet a reinforced concrete wall of e.g. triangular section and anchored with "long enough" piles would be about the only not-that-expensive way to turn a short strip of "airport land" past the EMAS into a V1 stopping supermarket.
FabHK
21 days ago
2 replies
> Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this

Ha, Jeju Air Flight 2216 smashed into a barrier on the second landing attempt in Muan last year [0], and people commented "How could there be a barrier at the end of the runway, so obviously stupid, irresponsible", etc.

Now a plane does not smash into a barrier at the end of the runway and people suggest putting barriers at the end of the runway.

Don't mean to attack parent post, but may I suggest that

a) hordes of experts have thought long and hard about these issues, and it is unlikely that you can encounter this for the first time as a lay person and come up with a solution that has eluded the best engineers for decades ("why don't they attach a parachute to the plane?"), and

b) we are very close to an optimum in commercial aviation, and there are few if any unambiguous ("Pareto") improvements, but rather just tradeoffs. For example: You leave cockpit doors open, terrorists come in and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon. You lock the cockpit doors closed, and suicidal pilots lock out the rest of the crew and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon of mass-murder-suicide.

There are no easy answers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Air_Flight_2216

ETA: In 2007 an A320 overran a runway in Brazil and crashed into a gas station, killing 187 pax & crew + 12 on the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054

linehedonist
21 days ago
2 replies
One improvement is a bed of concrete at the end of the runway that will catch the wheels and slow an airplane down to a stop. Pretty much everyone agrees it’s a good idea but it’s not always possible due to space needs or cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...
hshdhdhehd
20 days ago
2 replies
If it costs too much it is also a bad idea. Why? Because that money can be spent on other safety.
brazzy
20 days ago
The Wikipedia article says exactly the opposite, citing hard numers.
rob74
20 days ago
If you're designing a new airport, sure, you can have runways with ample safety margins and generous overrun areas at the end of the runways. If you want to make an existing airport safer, and you can't buy up and demolish buildings around it, using EMAS is actually a cost-effective safety improvement.
amelius
20 days ago
1 reply
Also put the fire department right next to it. Or some kind of automated extinguisher.
fullstop
20 days ago
2 replies
There was a young girl who survived the crash of Asiana flight 214, but was run over by a firetruck because she was covered in extinguisher foam.
amelius
20 days ago
1 reply
=> Don't drive through the foam.
fullstop
20 days ago
1 reply
Yes, we can have the automated extinguishers leave a clear path. :-)
amelius
20 days ago
Use drones if necessary.
amelius
20 days ago
2 replies
> Later investigations concluded that Ye was already dead from severe injuries caused by being ejected from the aircraft.

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214

JCharante
20 days ago
biased investigations
fullstop
20 days ago
Wow, TIL. Thanks for pointing that out!
fuzzythinker
21 days ago
2 replies
Or a ramp with "one-way teeth" that stops it with gravity and stops it from sliding back down with teeth.
hshdhdhehd
20 days ago
1 reply
The plane is fast and heavy.
potato3732842
20 days ago
And fragile and will go splat if you try and do anything approaching a runaway truck ramp to it.
kijin
20 days ago
The ramp will need to be very long and very high in order to absorb the momentum of a fully loaded widebody jet. Not something that you'd want near a runway where planes can land in either direction.

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