LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — In a quiet house, the wife of one of the pilots killed when UPS Flight 2976 went down near Louisville's airport still sits waiting for him to come home.
Donna Diamond says negligence took the love of her life away from her.
As a pilot, Capt. Dana Diamond lived much of his life amongst the clouds — often leaving his wife behind at their Texas home. But before every flight, he made sure she was taken care of.
"He'd be like, making sure I was straight, feeding the dogs and the car was filled up with gas," Donna Diamond said.
As she did with every trip, she still waits for her husband to come home.
Dana Diamond. (Photo provided by Donna Diamond)
"It feels like before, but I know it's not gonna happen," she said.
It's been four months since her husband was killed when the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo plane, built in 1991, went down around 5:15 p.m. Nov. 4 after its left wing caught fire.
NTSB Preliminary report | Victims identified | What's next
The plane was fully loaded with fuel for the nine-hour flight to Honolulu from UPS Worldport at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. Fifteen people, including Diamond and two other pilots, died in the crash.
Just before takeoff, he sent a text saying "I love you wife." It was the last thing Donna Diamond would ever hear from the love of her life.
"I just hit the floor in the kitchen," she said. "Just screaming, screaming."
Diamond said he came into her life unexpectedly. After her husband passed away, she reluctantly tried a dating app a decade ago.
Dana Diamond was her first and only date.
Dana Diamond and his grandchildren. (Photo provided by Donna Diamond)
"We were inseparable since then," she said. "Then we got married really quickly."
He never had children of his own, but through his new family became a "Paw Paw."
"He was like having an eighth grandchild when they all got together and got them stirred up and wild," Diamond said.
She called him "big shot," and the two were rarely apart. Whether shopping together, working on their land or talking on the phone when he was away.
Dana Diamond spent 37 years with UPS, earning his pilot's license before he ever got his drivers license.
"I would say flying was his heartbeat," Donna Diamond said.
He also had a passion for safety.
"The fact this engine failure happened was literally a betrayal of everything he stood for," attorney Sam Taylor said.
Last week, Donna Diamond filed a lawsuit in Jefferson Circuit Court against Boeing, General Electric and VT San Antonio Aerospace, Inc. — the company that did maintenance on the plane weeks before the crash.
Her attorney said the lawsuit centers on the left engine, which investigators said detached from the plane.
For Diamond, the loss of her husband has left as large of a hole as the sky he once flew through.
"It's been really big," she said.
If she could send one more message back to the man she loved, it would be "You really were a big shot. I love you, I'm really proud of you."
NTSB report on the plane crash
The NTSB's preliminary report said the plane's left engine caught fire and detached during takeoff. In that report, the agency's investigation revealed the part that secured the engine showed "fatigue cracks" and overstress failure across much of the bearing race inside the area that attached the plane's left engine to its wing. Investigators say the UPS plane got only 30 feet into the air before it crashed and burst into flames, hitting several businesses just south of the airport.
"When an engine separates from a wing seconds after takeoff, that's not an accident," said Mark Lanier, an attorney representing Donna Diamond, in a news release last week. "That's a failure by the companies responsible for building and maintaining that aircraft."
The lawsuit claims wrongful death, negligence, loss of consortium and related damages "for the multiple failures of the defendants that contributed to the engine separation and resulting crash." It requests punitive damages and a trial by a jury.
The UPS cargo plane was nearly airborne when a bell sounded in the cockpit, Inman said. For the next 25 seconds, the bell rang and the pilots tried to control the aircraft as it barely lifted off the runway, its left wing ablaze and missing an engine, and then plowed into the ground in a spectacular fireball.
Flight records suggest the 34-year-old plane underwent maintenance while it was on the ground in San Antonio for more than a month, from September through mid-October. The Associated Press reported it wasn't clear what work was done. But according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the plane needed a critical fuel tank repair.
The report cited FAA maintenance records that show the jet needed a permanent repair to fix a crack in the fuel tank before it returned to service. WDRB is working to independently obtain those maintenance records from the FAA.
The federal investigation into the plane crash showed one of the key defects found on the plane's failed engine was a known issue among Boeing's service team, albeit one Boeing didn't believe would lead to a "safety of flight condition."
NTSB investigators then went back into Boeing service data and confirmed the design of the bearing assembly was consistent with the original design of that part. However, a Boeing Service Letter dated Feb. 7, 2011, told operators the company was aware of four previous bearing race failures on three different airplanes. Boeing had seen the fractures of the bearing race, with the parts splitting in two and moving out of place.
However, Boeing told operators its review of the bearing failure "would not result in a safety of flight condition."
Boeing said further regular inspection of MD-11 airplanes would include a look at this bearing assembly, something scheduled for 60-month service intervals. And while Boeing used that service letter to discuss a new bearing assembly configuration, the installation of the original parts "was not prohibited."
Days after the crash, UPS and FedEx said they grounded their fleets of McDonnell Douglas MD-11s "out of an abundance of caution." And the Federal Aviation Administration's directive the following day sidelined the planes until inspection and correction of any problems. In January, UPS announced that its fleet of the cargo plans are now officially retired.
Several other lawsuits against UPS, General Electric and Boeing are all pending.
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