*MAJOR* UPS Aircraft Crash Flight 2976 on Takeoff | Kentucky

Bro, get away from your

holy

holy [ __ ]

Holy smokes. An absolutely massive

fireball of an explosion after this UPS

aircraft with some form of fire at the

left wing crashes and explodes. uh

reportedly and some of this information

may change here. So, I'm going to do my

best to provide it uh and provide as

much insight into this as we can. So, it

looks like this is UPS flight 2976

crashing around 5:15 p.m. local time

departing from Louisville Muhammad Ali

International Airport in Kentucky in

route to Honolulu. uh FAA and NTSB uh

indicating that they are going to

investigate obviously. Uh it looks like

the uh cargo plane may have crashed into

a Ford facility just off the end of the

runway, a manufacturing plant. Uh keep

in mind this particular aircraft has a

maximum takeoff weight of 630,000

lb. compared to a small business jet

like something that I'm licensed to fly

in as a single pilot. That is about 35

times the maximum takeoff weight. So,

this is an absolute massive beast. It

carries 18 times as much fuel. So, when

you see the fireball, which I'll show

you from different angles, understand

this was a plane going from Kentucky

against the jetream, though it's not so

bad yet this time of the year, against

the jetream to Hawaii, which is across

the ocean. So, you're going to want

enough fuel, usually an even larger

reserve. So, that way if you had some

issue off, let's say, the coast of

California or relatively close to

Hawaii, you could still make it there

with enough fuel or turn around if you

needed to at some point over the ocean.

So, you're almost certainly maxed out on

fuel here, uh, and likely fully loaded

in payload. I would argue that most

payload is typically going to Hawaii

rather than from Hawaii, other than

perhaps pineapples, but or Kona coffee,

which is also really great. But this is

really devastating. Now, it was a cargo

aircraft, so we we don't know how many

passengers were on board. Typically,

we've got an engineer and a couple

pilots on a board of these. But, let's

analyze what happened here. So, uh,

first of all, there are a few things to

know here. Uh, this aircraft appears to

be, uh, on fire the moment this

recording clip begins. Now, I'm going to

play it in full with audio so you could

see it, but you can notice that when

this clip begins, the aircraft has

already rotated. Now, why does that

matter? Well, it matters because once

you have agreed to rotate and frankly

even before that, you are committing to

the takeoff. This is not unusual. This

is exactly what pilots are trained to

do. Listen to me do a takeoff brief so

you can have an idea of what the

intentions of a pilot typically are uh

when you're lining up ready to take off.

So, this is a typical briefing you do

with your co-pilot. Listen to this and

you're going to hear three different

phrases. Number one, uh you're going to

hear 70 knot cross check, no stopping

unless there's an engine fire, engine

fail. Once we go V1, we're going flying.

And what we saw in the video was they're

already past VR, which you go, you know,

cross checks, which in our case is 70

knots. V1, which let's say is 105, and

then VR, which is rotate, where our nose

comes up, might be 106, 107. In our

case, it's usually pretty close in our

case. Uh, and then you're going flying.

So, if you have an engine failure,

you're going to put in that opposite

rudder and you're going to try to fly

around. But, as you could find, this max

weight plane likely presumably max

weight plane just doesn't get the lift

to take off. But listen to the calm so

you could hear what this sounds like in

a typical cockpit. Well, in at least

private aviation,

>> first of the day 470.

cancel for any issue other than that FMS

disagree which should come up today. We

didn't sit for a while.

>> After 70 only for engine failure, engine

fire after rotation, we're flying gear

up. Flaps up. Engine failure. We go

level off. Climb at V2 and we'll enter

the pattern. Come back obviously declare

an emergency.

>> Plenty of runway here. If we can't do

the impossible turn, we're just going to

>> Nobody does the impossible turn. That's

more of a joke.

The impossible turn is when you lose

both engines and you have no engine

power and you try to turn around. You

could pull it off maybe on a glider, but

not on a jet aircraft and not on most

aircraft. Right? So, the point of this

is Oxnard in this case is a straightaway

shot for us to go land into if we need

to. Now, we're going to break this down

in just a moment, but I want you to see

the call outs and then you could see it.

It'll make a lot more sense when we go

look at that crash footage that they're

already too late to abort the takeoff.

Way too late. Watch this. Take off.

Power set.

Power set. All right. ATR's at the

greenway.

56.

>> V1 rotate goes really fast for us. So,

it seems like these are merged. But know

that when we said 70, between 70 and V1,

that's when we would kill power if we

got an engine fire alarm or an engine

failure alarm. So my hand is on the

throttle between 70 when we shut up 70.

You can go back and watch it again if

you want. My hands on the power on the

throttle and if there's any issue, I

yeet that power back and I'm slamming on

the brakes. We are stopping. Maintain

center line directional control of the

aircraft. Get the hell off that runway

and figure out what just happened. But

now we're at that V1 beyond that VR

rotate position. My hand moves from the

throttle to rotate the aircraft up. At

this point, even if I start getting

engine fire, engine failure warnings at

this point, I need to fly the aircraft.

Okay, that's a problem because we're

going too fast at this point to stop.

Now, watch really closely in this video

here. And you can see they're well on

fire already by the time they've rotated

here. The question is, did they know?

And of course, what caused this fire? Is

it possible that this fire was caused by

uh a lithium-ion battery inside the

cargo hold? Some form of component in

the cargo hold was uh you know, the

temperatures on the day were about 57°

Fahrenheit about an hour ago in

Louisville. So, this isn't really a

particularly hot day. They should have

enough performance, assuming two

engines. This is about an 11,000 ft

runway, but everything needs to go

perfectly if you lose an engine. If you

had a rolling takeoff, you didn't start

all the way at the end of the runway.

Maybe you even started in a, you know,

one or two uh taxi taxi ways in on this

runway, you're not going to have enough

lift to actually maintain this takeoff

on one engine. Could they have

maintained this and come back to land?

Absolutely.

If they didn't hit the trees at the end

of the runway. Watch closely.

>> Bro, get the [ __ ] away from your severe

fire.

>> No lift,

>> bro.

>> You can actually see [music] the plane

starts dropping here. I It It My My

guess, and this is a guess. My guess is

they may have pulled the flaps up

because you could see the landing gear

go up. The landing gear right here is

the landing gear. You could see the

landing gear goes up and then the

aircraft actually sinks a bit here. It

gets lower to the ground in just a

moment. There you go. It's getting lower

to the ground. That may have been an

early retraction of the flaps, honestly.

Uh not sure, but uh as you could see, it

it is just not able to gain any

additional lift here. So it's un like I

I don't want to speculate that this is

something that you know went oopsy

dupsies here uh in in the pilot

procedures clearly uh they uh were

already in the position of rotating when

this fire gets more advanced and given

that you're in the front cockpit you

don't see the engine unlike a car where

the engine block is in front of you

don't know that there's smoke or fire

coming out of the back. The best you

could hope for is that air traffic

control calls you and says you're on

fire, assuming your warnings aren't go

aren't going off. But who knows? This

all depends on where the fire is, where

the smoke is. Are the smoke detectors

responding quickly enough on the actual

engine or where the fire is emanating

from. These are all questions we're

going to have. Let's listen to this

again in full here because you'll hear

some audio from the uh people filming

this.

>> Bro, get the [ __ ] away from your lights.

No, no, no.

Bro, hold on. Hold on. I think it's

going to crash, bro. Holy [ __ ]

Holy [ __ ]

Holy [ __ ] Damn, they're dead. They are

dead, bro.

That's absolutely heartbreaking. Uh, not

only is this heartbreaking, but Oh, look

at the tilt there to the left. Uh, you

could see this tilt slightly to the

left. This is a very common yaw that

you're going to get to the left because

the left engine is now going to start

losing thrust. And presumably on takeoff

here, if they got the engine fire or

engine failure alarm bells, they would

have set the thrust on that left engine

to idle and then started working their

emergency procedures such as cutting

fuel flow to that engine. But it's too

late. The thing is so heavily on fire

and we're not gaining lift. You can

almost see the frustration here of that

uh that nose pull up a little bit more

because they realize how close they are

to the ground uh and that they're just

not going flying. Uh it's possible then

that uh they also and this is unknown

but it is possible that because of the

nervousness of coming towards the end of

this runway without

gaining enough altitude. It is possible

they over rotated. Now again, I'm not

here to blame a pilot. It's likely these

pilots have way more hours than I do,

and these are just the terrible

situations that can happen in aviation.

But I want to explain why that would be

a natural reaction. Think about this.

Let's take this hairbrush thingy majiggy

here and let's assume you're flying that

aircraft. You're the pilot of that

aircraft. Then you pull up. you get an

engine failure. The first thing that

we're typically taught to do, as you

actually saw in my radio transmission,

is level off and then climb with our one

engine out procedure. That is going to

be at a significantly

reduced climbing altitude or or pitch.

That's because especially if you're full

of fuel and especially if you're full of

cargo and especially if you're on one

engine, your stall speed is going to be

much lower. So, in other words, you're

likely at this higher pitch to stall

much more quickly. That sucks. You don't

want to stall the aircraft because now

what can happen is the engine goes out.

Technically, we should be leveling off a

bit and flying very very slowly. This is

why we have uh obstacle uh departure

procedures at airports. So that way we

can fly a departure on one engine at a

very very slight elevation.

Theoretically, if there are no trees at

the end of the runway, or if you had all

of the end of the runway, if all of the

factors were perfect, assuming they

didn't have a rolling takeoff start,

assuming they didn't enter at an earlier

uh uh taxi way, uh assuming they

responded immediately by leveling off

that pitch, technically you should be

able to clear a 50-ft obstacle at the

end of that runway and climb at a very,

very nominal pitch. I mean, technically,

you're flying when you're 50 to 100 feet

off the ground as long as you don't hit

anything. You could fly at a very, very,

very low altitude. Doesn't give you a

lot of margin of safety, but it gives

you enough very slow climb ability to

get on one engine, that turn and get

back to that airport, get back in the

pattern, and come land at that airport

again. Uh unfortunately whether uh it

was just we just started too far down

the runway. We won't know yet. Whether

we overpitched here and then stalled

out, we don't know yet. We don't know

what caused the fire in the first place.

It looks pretty clear to me that it's an

engine fire on the left. Like the

cowling looks like at this point it's

just fully engulfed. And unfortunately,

this could have been a very small fire

that was just undetected for whatever

reason in the engine. Some form of of uh

oopsy dupsies basically that when they

gave full throttle, you actually

provided more air and more fuel to the

fire

before the alarms and detectors could

actually pick up on the crisis that was

unfolding. So, this is a very

devastating situation. Now, uh, keep in

mind some other images here. This is

where we see folks talking about the

potential Ford plant, uh, at the end of

the runway. Uh, although it looks more

like the, um, accident was closer to the

parking lot over here. There are

injuries reported uh, on the uh, ground,

but it's unclear if those were the, you

know, pilots involved or or otherwise.

Presumably, it was the pilots involved

in addition to potentially others. Here

you can see the heat wave where sort of

the radiation expand from the explosion

uh which is just absolutely devastating.

Uh and then if you actually look at the

flames of this disaster where it spilled

cargo now dowsed in fuel uh and and and

and I mean jet fuel uh spilled across I

mean what appear to be smaller uh

buildings. Uh it's obviously unclear.

We've got containers over here. Those

could be from the Ford plant. It's again

unclear. could be the parking lot of uh

the Ford facility here. But this is

quite quite a devastating situation.

Take a look at uh this explo explosion

from another angle here.

>> [screaming]

>> Absolutely devastating here. Absolutely

devastating uh and heartbreaking

accident. Uh and it's just now going to

be a matter of time to finally find find

out again what caused this accident. Uh

why were we not able to conduct a single

engine takeoff? Again, did we take off

too far down the runway? You know, what

what were you what was told to them on

their departure? And frankly, how did

this fire get so advanced so rapidly uh

without being able to catch the

situation beforehand? This is uh very

very devastating. Uh and and it's

absolutely heartbreaking. Uh it is uh

okay here significant damage to the

warehouse utilized by UPS chain

solutions as a result of the crash here.

Uh it looks like some of uh the this

looks like the wing that broke off that

sliced into a particular uh UPS

facility. Not necessarily where al

although you would assume there'd be

more fire here, which is actually

somewhat surprising that you don't see

more char given that fuel is stored in

the wing. But if you take a look at the

actual uh footage that we started with,

you'll see the wing break off, and it's

a devastating scene. Look at the wing

break off right here on the left of your

screen. There it is. See that? Almost

like a shark fin breaking off from the

explosion towards the left.

So, it's unclear if that fuel is just

spilling out and dumping where that

explosion is and then the lingering

debris of potentially the empty portion

of that wing slicing through another

building.

Absolutely devastating.

>> Why not advertise these things that you

told us here? I feel like nobody else

knows about this.

>> We'll we'll try a little advertising and

see how it goes.

>> Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you. Kevin Praath there, financial

analyst [music] and YouTuber, Meet

Kevin. Always great to get your take.