Louisville: A repeating bell sounded in the cockpit for 25 seconds as pilots tried to control a UPS cargo plane that caught fire, had an engine fall off and crashed during take-off this week in Louisville, Kentucky, a National Transportation Safety Board member said on Friday.
The cockpit voice recorder captured a persistent bell that began about 37 seconds after the crew called for take-off thrust, and the bell continued until the recording ended, which investigators believe was the final point of impact, NTSB member Todd Inman said.
Inman said there could be different types of alarms with varying meanings, but investigators know there was a fire in the plane’s left wing and will use flight data to help determine a clearer picture of what happened.
On Friday, the NTSB released drone footage showing the devastation on the ground caused by the burning plane crashing through a swath of industrial buildings, including a petroleum recycling facility.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said the bell was probably signalling the engine fire.
“It occurred at a point in the take-off where they were likely past their decision speed to abort the take-off,” Guzzetti told the Associated Press after Inman’s news conference on Friday (Saturday AEDT).
“They were likely past their critical decision speed to remain on the runway and stop safely … They’ll need to thoroughly investigate the options the crew may or may not have had.”
The crash on Wednesday AEDT at UPS Worldport, the company’s global aviation hub in Louisville, killed 13 people; the three pilots – Captain Richard Wartenberg, First Officer Lee Truitt and International Relief Officer Captain Dana Diamond – and 10 people on the ground.
The aircraft barely missed a restaurant, a convention centre and a large Ford plant.
The 34-year-old MD-11 cargo plane was heading for Honolulu and carrying about 38,000 gallons of fuel when it crashed, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear told reporters.
Inman said it would be months before a transcript of the cockpit recording is made public as part of that investigation process.
Investigators trawl video for clues
Dramatic video capturing the crash from phones, dashcams and CCTV has provided investigators with visual evidence of what happened from numerous angles.
The NTSB clarified on Friday that preliminary data on the aircraft’s altitude indicated it got about 30 metres above the ground, not 144 metres. It reached a speed of 340 km/h before crashing just outside the Louisville airport, Inman said.
The engine’s main component and pieces of the engine fan blades were recovered from the airfield.
Inman said UPS indicated no maintenance work was performed before the flight “that would delay it in any way”. He noted that investigators would review the video to determine what, if anything, had been done around the aircraft in the preceding days.
The UPS package handling facility in Louisville is the company’s largest. The hub employs more than 20,000 people in the region, handles 300 flights daily and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.
Lawsuit alleges negligence
Litigation over the crash has already begun. A federal lawsuit was filed on Thursday against UPS by an automotive repair company that was destroyed in the crash, and a resident who was treated at a hospital after breathing in smoke.
The aircraft and engine manufacturers of the plane were also named in the lawsuit, which alleges the defendants “negligently breached their duty of reasonable care and prevented unreasonable harm”. It seeks unspecified damages.
The companies named as defendants didn’t immediately return emails seeking comment on Friday.
AP
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