Frame by frame, six photos released by federal investigators on Thursday graphically captured horrifying images of ill-fated Flight 2976 as it turned into a deadly fireball along a Kentucky airport runway.
The chilling sequence first shows an engine coming loose from the UPS cargo plane during takeoff. The engine pops off the plane as fire erupts in the next image, followed by the blazing engine catapulting off the stricken plane. The final images show the plane ablaze as it gets airborne, leaving behind trails of smoke.
This is what it looks like when the bosses cut costs by eliminating “wasteful” maintenance jobs
It’s too early to lay blame. Every commercial aircraft has very clear maintenance schedules, including procedures that would have included a through inspection of the part that appears to have failed on this plane (aft lug to which the engine pylon was attached). The NTSB prelim report does not call out any failure to adhere to the maintenance schedule.
The NTSB investigation has found signs of metal fatigue in the part that failed, but the defect was located such that it wouldn’t have been visible on an external inspection. The next inspection procedure that could have caught the issue wasn’t due to be performed until another 8000 or so cycles (takeoffs and landings) on that particular airframe. This looks like it’s shaping up to be an engineering failure, where the manufacturer of the aircraft has significantly overestimated the durability of this particular part.