US federal safety investigators have located the “black box” recorders from the wreckage of a UPS (UPS.N) cargo plane that crashed in flames on takeoff from the airport at Louisville, Kentucky, killing at least 12 people, officials said on Wednesday.
Todd Inman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, also confirmed that a large “plume of fire” erupted around the plane’s left wing and that one of its three engines detached from that wing as the wide-body jet was rolling down the runway.
The 34-year-old MD-11 freighter was bound for Honolulu with three crew members aboard when it crashed just after clearing a fence at the end of the runway during takeoff on Tuesday evening, striking several structures just beyond airport property, Inman said.
The plane was immediately engulfed in a fireball, igniting a string of blazes and scattering a debris field that stretched about a half a mile (800 m) through an industrial corridor, including a petroleum recycling facility that was set ablaze and exploded.
The crash and ensuing fires also forced a shutdown of the airport for the night and disrupted airport-based operations at the UPS Worldport facility, the company’s global cargo hub for its air shipments worldwide, slowing delivery services.
Inman, in the first NTSB briefing since the disaster, said the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were built to withstand crash impacts and intense heat from fires, and they appeared to be intact when located on Wednesday amid the crash debris.
“We feel comfortable that once we get these to our lab in (Washington) D.C., that we will be able to get a good readout of the applicable data, and that will be yet another point of information that will really help us understand what happened,” Inman told reporters.
The NTSB typically issues preliminary reports on major air crashes within 30 days, but it takes 12 to 24 months to complete a full investigation, make a finding of probable cause and issue recommendations to help avoid similar incidents.
Earlier on Wednesday, Governor Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency in Kentucky aimed at hastening the flow of disaster response resources to the scene of the crash.
As of Wednesday evening, at least nine people were confirmed to have been killed on the ground, in addition to the three members of the plane’s crew who perished, according to authorities.
“I’m deeply saddened to share that the death toll has risen to 12, with several individuals still unaccounted for,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said on social media platform X as recovery teams continued to pick through the crash zone.
Authorities said on Tuesday that 11 people injured on the ground, some very seriously, had been hospitalised.
It was not known whether any of them were later counted among the dead.
About 200 firefighters and emergency personnel and 50 trucks were called on Tuesday to battle the blaze that filled the evening sky with thick, black smoke.
Still, Beshear said a nearby convention centre, restaurant and Ford Motor Co (F.N) plant escaped the blaze.
Independent Pilots Association President Captain Bob Travis said the three pilots in the plane were all on duty.
The union, which represents about 3,300 UPS pilots, said in an interview that it is a party to the investigation led by the NTSB.
The international airport in Louisville reopened to air traffic early on Wednesday, although the runway where the accident happened is expected to remain closed for another 10 days, officials said.
UPS, which had halted package-sorting operations in Louisville after the crash, said it was resuming operations at its Worldport air cargo hub on Wednesday evening.
“Our goal is to begin returning the network to a normal cadence with flights arriving at destinations Thursday morning,” a company spokesperson said.
The NTSB’s Inman said so far, there was no evidence of a link between the accident and a 36-day US government shutdown that has strained air traffic control.
He said the airport tower was believed to have been “at its proper complement” of personnel.
Boeing and GE Aerospace (GE.N), which produces the engines for the plane, said they had offered support to the investigation.
US aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse said investigators were expected to focus on the engine, which was seen on video to be ignited and appeared to have separated from the aircraft.
“It is designed to fly if you lose one engine, but we need to see the effect of losing that engine on the rest of the aircraft,” Brickhouse said.
The plane was fully loaded with fuel for an 8-1/2-hour flight to Honolulu.
It was the first UPS cargo plane to crash since August 2013, when an Airbus aircraft went down on a landing approach to the international airport in Birmingham, Alabama, killing both crew members.
