FAA records reveal crashed UPS cargo plane once had cracks, corrosion on fuel tank

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The UPS plane that crashed Tuesday near the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport once had cracks and corrosion in its main structure and a fuel tank.

UPS Flight 2976 was fully loaded with fuel for a nine-hour flight to Honolulu from UPS Worldport when it went down around 5:15 p.m. Nov. 4 after its left wing caught fire. According to documents WDRB requested from the Federal Aviation Administration, the MD-11 jet built by McDonnell-Douglas in 1991 had major maintenance completed just months before this devastating crash.

Three different reports were filed in early September.

One shows the "center wing upper fuel tank" had a crack in it and needed a permanent repair. The other two reports reveal corrosion in the plane's center cargo area. Brian Gaudet with the Independent Pilot's Association, the union that represents UPS pilots, said maintenance checks on aircraft occur in cycles. But before UPS flight crew boards any plane to fly or move the aircraft, it must get checked and greenlit by UPS mechanics.

"Otherwise, it would be illegal to fly it," Gaudet said. "This fatal crash is different. This really does hit home with our pilot group and members of the community. Everybody knows somebody who works at UPS."

Gaudet said the IPA is helping the National Transportation Safety Board with its investigation.

"We're honored to be part of that team that looks into finding what the answers are, because we now have three pilots that can't speak for themselves," Gaudett said. "So we're here to speak for them. We're here to find the answers for them and their families."

Gaudet said flying for UPS isn't a job people get right out of flight school, and all of its pilots are highly trained.

"Most of the people who are hired here as pilots — the vast majority — are people who have been in the military for 20 years and retired," Gaudett said. "They're people who've been at commuter airlines for 20 years. They've been at big cargo airlines that you know are business-to-business, so they're not as well known as FedEx and UPS. So when they come here, our pilots have lots and lots and lots of experience."

Gaudett couldn't say if the pilots were trained for the exact scenario that happened Tuesday, with the plane's engine coming apart from the left wing during takeoff.

"They train in the simulators for when you're about to take off and an engine goes out," Gaudett said. "In terms of the specifics of what happened Tuesday night, I'm not sure they strained to that specificity."

He said the union has experienced three deadly crashes since 2010, but this is the first to happen in Louisville. Gaudett said IPA learns something from each of those crashes to ensure they never happen again.

"We got to the lesson on 2010 about lithium batteries," Gaudett said. "We got we learned the lesson in 2013 about fatigue and we heard that directly from our pilots on the voice data recorder. We will learn this over time through the NTSB investigation."

Gaudett said most recent lesson, though, won't come until after the NTSB finishes its investigation, which could be months, if not a year, from now.

"I'm confident between our safety task force with the company and our security task force with the company, we'll learn something from this and make the changes necessary so this type of accident doesn't happen again at UPS,"Gaudett said. "The NTSB's investigation is going to take months, if not a year, to get done."

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