LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A damning Jan. 14 report from the National Transportation Safety Board documented that the United Parcel Service plane that crashed on takeoff at the Muhammed Ali International Airport here last November had a structural flaw that Boeing was aware of at the time. The company sent a 2011 service letter to UPS and all other owners of the airplane involved.
This flaw caused a stress fracture in the assembly holding the engine on the left wing of the MD-11F UPS plane. It broke completely off and burst into flames, causing the plane to crash. Fifteen people were killed, many more injured, and factories and other businesses in the area were damaged or destroyed.
Although this same part had fractured in similar fashion on at least four other occasions on three other aircraft, the letter from Boeing claimed it “would not result in a safety of flight condition.” The plane was made by McDonnell Douglas, which was acquired by Boeing in the 1990s.
The letter told UPS and other airline companies flying these planes that Boeing had a replacement part that did not have the same flaw, but did not recommend the companies replace the part. The Federal Aviation Administration had received copies of the correspondence between Boeing and UPS, but did nothing to investigate further.
The 34-year-old plane has “the second-worst safety record of any commercial aircraft still in service,” the lawsuit filed against Boeing and UPS by those affected by the deadly crash noted. It was carrying some 38,000 gallons of fuel for a flight to Hawaii. The shops that were hit by the crashing plane in the nearby industrial area had 260,000 gallons of motor oil and antifreeze in storage. This caused a huge fiery explosion that sent smoke and debris into neighborhoods miles from the airport.
Thirteen people were killed immediately, including the plane’s three pilots, workers and customers at several small businesses in the area and a 3-year-old child. Another person died a couple days later. Alain Rodriguez Colina, 50, a Cuban immigrant and employee of Grade A Auto Parts, died of severe burns seven weeks later on Christmas Day.
The NTSB report pointed to similarities between the Louisville crash and a 1979 American Airlines DC-10 crash in Chicago that killed 273 people. McDonnell Douglas issued a service bulletin following that crash identifying the failure of a spherical bearing race — the same part that failed on the closely related MD-11 — as a “safety of flight condition,” meaning it could lead to a disaster.
On Nov. 8 the FAA issued an order to ground all MD-11 and MD-11F planes, and a few days later updated it to include DC-10 planes. The order said, “The unsafe condition is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design.”
“The deaths of these 15 people and the destruction of businesses and environmental disaster can’t be called an ‘accident,’” John Hawkins, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Senate in Ohio, told the Militant. “It’s obvious that Boeing, UPS and the FAA knew enough about the dangerous flaw in these planes that they should have grounded and repaired years ago.
“Working people can’t rely on the bosses, government regulatory agencies or the courts to keep us safe at work or at home. We have to use our unions to fight for workers control of all aspects of production and transportation. To eliminate disasters like this once and for all, we have to take political power out of the hands of the profit-driven capitalist class and establish a workers government.”