Sheesh that was on fire before it even tried to lift off and was a louisville->hawaii flight so it was LOADED with fuel.
Double engine failure is visible on video
Yeah there’s no surviving a double engine failure on takeoff in a tri jet.
Someone brought this up the other day and I realised I’d never really thought about it; but its pretty weird all the extraneous people they always have standing behind the speakers at these press conferences
The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 is an American trijet wide-body airliner which was manufactured by McDonnell Douglas (MDC) and later by Boeing.
I don’t think Boeing has ever done any design work (aside from maintenance and spare parts) for the MD-11, as soon as they bought MacDonnell Douglas they cancelled the MD-11 manufacturing and built more 777s, which is why no passenger airline operates them.
The MD-11 is inherently flawed in some ways (because of changes made to the DC-10 concept it’s based on to try extend range and improve fuel efficiency), pilots require specialised training to operate it. Because of it’s tiny horizontal stabilizer and elevators, it has poor ability to land in crosswinds and has the highest approach speed of any airliner currently in service, historically only the Concorde had a higher approach speed. That has nothing to do with this crash though, that’s a double engine failure on takeoff.
The video on this is absolutely nuts
Sorry for reddit link, obvious tag but CW:fatal plane crash. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1oowmbi/dashcam_of_ups_plane_crash_with_sound_and_the/
for real. i just assumed it was like some kind of rough landing situation, not some monsterously huge hollywood fireball.
and my understanding is that where it exploded is full of like industrial capacity/logistical supply infrastructure, so like hazardous materials and fuel tanks everywhere.
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The video makes it look like the left engine failed catastrophically, and then the smoke or parts falling off of that engine were sucked in by the middle engine causing that engine to lose thrust.
According to the linked CBS article, it was loaded with about 38,000 gallons (172,751 liters) of fuel which if the density of the fuel I used was correct then that’s about 118,000kg (oddly quite a bit off of the ~106,000kg that CBS reported). Add in the empty weight of an MD-11 of 125,870kg and that’s 243,870kg or about 42,000kg shy of the maximum takeoff weight of the MD-11 of 286,000kg. With 20,000 packages on board this thing could’ve been very close its maximum takeoff weight. It should be able to climb with a single engine failure and no other failures at its maximum takeoff weight, but if the middle engine did lose thrust too then there wasn’t anything the crew could’ve done to save themselves or the plane once they made the decision to takeoff.
