UPS Plane Crashes in Louisville

NBC News Radio National Correspondent Rory O'Neill joins us to discuss the latest as a UPS plane crash in Louisville has claimed at least seven lives. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, there's new video and it's hard to watch. Rory O'Neil,
NBC News Radio National correspondent, joining us on the liveline
this morning. Rory, we're talking about Louisville, Kentucky.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, that awful crash of a ups plane.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
It crashed just after taking off from the airport in Louisville,
set for a long journey to Hawaii. And now there
were three people on board that cargo plane and MD eleven.
We believe that plane was about thirty five years old.
But the three crew on board we believe were killed.
But there were also four other people on the ground
who have died from their injuries. Eleven others are also

(00:37):
injured as a result of this crash. The NTSB is
arriving on sen this morning and is expected to update
the situation later today. I mean, when you look at
this video, the fireball of this explosion was unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
But was there anything hazardous on board?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Not on the plane itself, except again, it was just
taking off for an eleven hour flight, so this thing
was loaded with fuel. Again, the crew of three was
there's a pilot and co pilot and a spare because
they rotate because the flight is so long, so first
of all, full of fuel. Secondly, part of the plane
crashed into a fuel recycling oil recycling facility, so that's

(01:17):
why they were concerned about the bloom of smoke. Shelter
and place orders were issued because they didn't know what
was burning up in this. So you had the jet fuel,
but you also had a lot of these other materials
that were also being consumed by the fire.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
And from the video that I saw, the newer stuff
that appears to come from another plane, the thing was
on fire just before it took off, and it looked
like one of the engines. Obviously it's way too early
and there'll be a long investigation under this thing.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, so a few different things.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
We did see fire on the left side of the plane,
no doubt about it before it was or while it
was trying to take off. There's also been some footage
of the cowling the cover of an engine alongside the
runway at the Louisville Airport. You can see it on
the side of the runway. So obviously the focus is
going to be on that left engine, and MD eleven

(02:07):
has three engines, one over each wing and one tail engine.
The focus now will be on this left engine. So
now you've got to pull up the maintenance logs, see
when it was last prepared, last had issues.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Was it a recurring problem?

Speaker 3 (02:21):
All that is going to happen was their debris on
the runway that got sucked into the engine and then
that caused the pro All that stuff is part of this.
And you know we're talking about all of us have
already seen multiple videos barely twelve hours after the crash,
so there's still a lot for the NTSB to gather
to put this together. We're probably going to have a
pretty good idea of what happened in the next couple

(02:42):
of days, but the official documented version of all this
that's more likely to happen in eighteen months to two years.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
And in the meantime regionally flights were canceled and re routed.
In any idea when the airport opens back up.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, the airport is telling passengers this morning to contact
there their airline for information, but the plan is to
have some operations already underway today. The UPS flights a
couple of different runways there in Louisville. The UPS flights
typically stay on one of the runways and then commercial
traffic is on the north side of the airport, so

(03:19):
that was not impacted by this yesterday. But you know,
because of the smoke issues, the fire issues, and the
emergency equipment that was needed near the end of the runway,
a lot of the facility had been closed. So they're
hoping to get operational for the most part today, but
they had to cancel every flight after five point fifteen
last night.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Rory O'Neil, NBC News Radio National correspondent, Thank you, Thanks
Steve