When an aircraft crashes as tragically and spectacularly as UPS 2976 did on take-off from Louisville, Kentucky, it’s normal to search for the cause as soon as possible. And while it’s irresponsible to speculate, what we know for certain is that the 34-year-old MD11 was bound for Honolulu, a distance of just over 7000 kilometres and a flight time of around nine hours, so the aircraft would have had a heavy fuel load.

The McDonnell Douglas MD11 is the last iteration of the Douglas DC10, which entered service as a passenger aircraft in the 1970s. Although no longer in production, the DC10/MD11 family of aircraft has had a chequered career in both airline passenger service and air freight.

Credit: Nine News

In 1974, a cargo door on a Turkish Airlines plane burst open mid-flight, resulting in the deaths of 335 people; in 1979, a left engine separated from an American Airlines flight during take-off, killing 273, and many will recall the tragic loss the same year of Air New Zealand’s DC10 into Mount Erebus on an Antarctic flight, although that was not a fault of the aircraft.

Since........

© The Sydney Morning Herald