They were on fire just as they reached V1.
Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead at 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else, instead of go beyond the runway at that speed. Accelerating a fully loaded jet plane at ground level beyond the runway has obvious consequences. They had one choice.
Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low, they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by before this, footage shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground like a mousetrap by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.
Physics took over. Plane flipped and rolled upon loss of port wing, smearing a rolling fireball of the remaining fuel load from the starboard wing for another half a mile.
Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
Respect to the flight crew; rest in peace, they made the best they could out of a really shitty scenario. They flew it all the way down.
Footage:
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1985845987684855969?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985849267152699741?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985848132500885995?s=46
https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985843126934614297?s=46
Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this, and breaking failures following landings.
Many airports have this problem. The recent korean air disaster which echos this is another example. BTW, this is why most airports, if possible, point out to sea...
Older airports might have EMAS [1] retrofitted at the ends to help stop planes, but that's designed more for a landing plane not stopping quickly enough (like [2]) - not a plane trying to get airborne as in this case.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1248
Some do. Here is what it looks like when an overshooting plane utilizes such a barrier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW71FrX8t_g
179 dead.
Consider the possibility that gigantic flying aluminum tubes filled with tons of flammable fuel hurtling around at hundreds of kilometers per hour comprise a dilemma that has no trivial answers. Even defining what "important thing" means at any given instant is not straightforward.
As far as the rest of my comment - watch the videos that I linked.
I think pilot training is playing a factor. A normal rotation kills too much energy. One engine can climb when you have some airspeed and get clean, but if you lose too much energy on rotation, the inefficiency of the AoA for the rest of the short flight means that engine can no longer buy you any up. I've seen too many single-engine planes going down while trying to pitch up the whole way down.
So, less aggressive single-engine rotations and energy absorbers at the ends of runways that can't get longer. This seems like the kind of thing where we do it because it removes a significant cause of people dying.
Just watched this angle a few more times: https://x.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930
Another crash video shows the aircraft clearly descending before colliding with anything. It manages to go up a bit, so it's fast enough to get airborne. The normal looking rotation kills too much energy. The plane is then too inefficient to maintain speed. AoA goes up while energy goes down. Power available goes negative and then it's over.
More specifically, V1 is the max speed at which you're about to take off, but you can still abort from. They hit that max speed and realized there was a major problem that hypothetically, they could have slowed down from, but realistically was not possible. They had no choice.
You also don't particularly want it to be catastrophically effective as there are real world cases where planes have clipped the fence and then NOT gone on to crash, or at least to crash in a fairly controlled manner with the majority onboard surviving. Hitting a brick wall at 180mph is going to have a 0% survival rate.
Ha, Jeju Air Flight 2216 smashed into a barrier on the second landing attempt in Muan last year [0], and people commented "How could there be a barrier at the end of the runway, so obviously stupid, irresponsible", etc.
Now a plane does not smash into a barrier at the end of the runway and people suggest putting barriers at the end of the runway.
Don't mean to attack parent post, but may I suggest that
a) hordes of experts have thought long and hard about these issues, and it is unlikely that you can encounter this for the first time as a lay person and come up with a solution that has eluded the best engineers for decades ("why don't they attach a parachute to the plane?"), and
b) we are very close to an optimum in commercial aviation, and there are few if any unambiguous ("Pareto") improvements, but rather just tradeoffs. For example: You leave cockpit doors open, terrorists come in and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon. You lock the cockpit doors closed, and suicidal pilots lock out the rest of the crew and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon of mass-murder-suicide.
There are no easy answers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Air_Flight_2216
ETA: In 2007 an A320 overran a runway in Brazil and crashed into a gas station, killing 187 pax & crew + 12 on the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054
Yes, it did get airborne for a few seconds but from the video below, it looks like the left wing was damaged by the fire and could not provide enough lift, then the right wing rolled the plane to the left causing the crash.
https://bsky.app/profile/shipwreck75.bsky.social/post/3m4tvh...
When the plane reaches V1, pilots take the hand off the throttle: they're committed to takeoff, even if an engine fails. It is better to take off and fix the problem or land again, than to smash into whatever is beyond the end of the runway.
As I understand it, there is a low speed regime, under 80 knots, where are you stop for basically anything.
Then there is a high speed regime, where you only stop for serious issues, because you now have so much kinetic energy that stopping the plane, while still possible, will involve risk. (i.e. fire from overheated brakes.)
At a certain point, called V1, there’s no longer enough room to stop, no matter what your problem is. You’re either getting airborne or you’re crashing into whatever is ant the end of the runway. In general, getting airborne is the safer option, while obviously still not risk free.
However, this calculation also assumes that the engine fails in an isolated fashion, and its failure did not affect the other engines. If the failure of the left engine threw off debris that damaged the middle engine then we are now talking about a double engine failure. I’m sure the pilots knew there was a problem with the engine when they made the decision to continue, but it’s possible that problems with the middle engine weren’t apparent yet and that it only started to fail once they were committed.
Obviously, this is just speculation, and we will have to wait for the preliminary report at least.
RIP
Surely uncertainty about the situation contributes to defaulting to committing, but what if it's a passenger plane and at V1 pilots know they've lost power? Wouldn't veering into highway at 30 mph be weighted against certain, big loss of life?
Edit: I now see that this has been partially answered by uncle comment
The wings and aerodynamics don't really care if air or air with combustion are flowing around them.
Roll is a consequence of the loss of control due to low speed and the yaw of the good engines. Speed up, rudder works, plane might maintain positive climb.
Not saying it's what happened here, but if the heat is intense enough to deform the wing / control surfaces, it matters.
This situation (single engine failure at V1) is something that commercial pilots are certified in at every recurrent certification since it’s one of the most difficult you can be in. The crew now need to climb and go around for a landing on one engine while simultaneously running through the engine failure (and also likely fire) checklist. I don’t know if a double engine failure at V1 on a fully loaded 3 engine aircraft is technically survivable or if it’s something that’s trained on. They were put in an incredibly difficult situation just based on what reports we’ve already seen.
It's astonishing that this is a thing. Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation? I can understand why it can't be retro fitted to existing airports but is it a scenario that's considered at new airports? Just seems like such an absolutely basic safety step.
I'm skeptical whether pilots can realistically make this kind of decision, given that they have no more than a few seconds to make it, and in cases such as this based on very incomplete information about the state of their aircraft.
After V1 you must be able to take off on only the remaining engines. If that's not possible you must reduce weight until it is possible or you're not allowed to start takeoff at all.
This is why in very warm weather and higher altitude airports (lower performance) sometimes cargo/luggage or even some passengers are left behind, while in colder weather all seats could be used.
Airports also grow themselves. Some municipal airports sited for small aircraft extend their runways to handle larger planes.
The margin is for example that the plane must not just be able to fly, but also reach a minimum climb gradient to clear obstacles with a bit of safety margin. There is also an allowance for the time it takes from calling abort to actually hitting the brakes. And for example headwind is part of the calculation (it makes the takeoff distance shorter) but only 50% of the headwind is used in the calculations.
But all of those margins are not for the crew to use, the crew must just execute the procedure exactly as trained which means at V1 you're committed to continue the takeoff. And before V1 in case of an engine failure you have to hit the brakes to make sure you can stop before the end of the runway.
Between V1, Rotate and V2, there’s like a 2-3kts difference (between each of them).
I am not familiar what the procedure is if you have dual-engine failure at or above V1.
Work place related accidents always have a certain tragedy to them. Still remember when in the industrial park, my employer is located in, tanks belonging to a trash incinerator for special chemical waste exploded, taking several people with it.
The plane was two engines out and a main fuel tank on fire, fully laden with a full fuel load. No amount of training or improvisation was going to fix that.
If anything it's lucky/professional they crashed into an industrial park and didn't have time for a go around. It would have been an even bigger disaster if they'd crashed into the town centre or a residential area.
Captains can make the decision to abort the takeoff in the case of absolute power loss or for 'failure to fly' (where the aircraft is clearly not going to fly, e.g. the elevator/pitch controls aren't responding). But the training is adamant: if you're uncertain what has happened after V1 you try to fly the plane away from the runway.
Let's leave that word to mean what it actually means. Louisville experienced a serious fire.
That's what I'm getting at. I want to abort unsafely. Imagine 400 meters of grass field after the end of the runway, and a water body. I'm asking wether such factors are accounted for, or if plane on ground beyond runway does-not-compute.
More so, because of strong property rights it's very difficult to stop any development near the airports at all. The airport would have to buy up hundreds of square miles of land to prevent it at a staggering cost.
Lastly, one of the buildings that was hit was the UPS warehouse that stored goods to load on the plane. You want that as close as possible to the airport. Though right at the end of the runway is not the greatest place.
But no matter the margin, a plane can always crash on the wrong side of any fence. And people will always build right up to wherever you put the fence as closer to the airport is more convenient for everything airport related.
Arrestor beds exist, and given enough space a fully loaded plane at take-off velocity can be stopped in a controlled and safe way.
Cost and space are often the reason why this does not happen.
We need members of the public ready to help in a situation where a pilot goes crazy, and they can’t help with a locked door making it impossible for them to enter.
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
Not on the MD-11, anyway.
That "extra" 400m of grass? That's for all the other things that can still go wrong even when you follow procedure. e.g., you're below V1 so you abort takeoff, close throttles and hit the brakes. You should be able to safely stop on the runway.
But now your brakes fail because maybe the reason you had to abort was a fire that also managed to burn through your brake lines, or it started to rain just as you were taking off, or...
Now that's where the 400m of safety margin comes in to save your ass (hopefully). It's "extra", you don't plan on using it.
But that's exactly what a runway is? They're extremely long, have ample safety margins, and have "protected areas" extending out on either end, and outside of that there are regulations about what can and can't be built along the extendend runway centerlines. But jetliners are huge, heavy, fast, and designed to go long distances - the stopping distance of a fully loaded jet at full takeoff speed is measured in miles.
Grade A Auto Parts on Melton Ave was the initial damaged building. I don't have the name of the chemical place handy.
Med Command setup at River City Metals.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Louisville/comments/1983ko2/what_ha...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...
V1 for this plane in those conditions is nearly 200 mph. Even if they shut down all engines and applied full brakes (and assuming the brakes/tires didn't catch fire), they'd still run off the end of the runway with enough kinetic energy to kill themselves and anyone else in the way.
I expect pilots are trained explicitly not to do that.
If you can't abort safely, than it follows that the safer course of action is to try to fly. I'm sure there are exceptions to that, but a pilot has barely seconds in which to decide if any of those exceptions apply, so they're not going to abandon procedure unless the situation is clear.
No, they were most likely NOT trying to be heores, its simply the standard thing to do. An aircraft is supposed to be able to take off with one engine inop, and at this speed the expected behaviour is to continue takeoff because that is what has been deemed safest.
There is always a grey area where the decision could go either way, stop or lift off and in this case it looks to me that trying to stop might have been better. But that is literally impossible to diagnose during the few seconds they had.
Regulations for locked cockpit doors were only introduced after 9/11, IIRC.
>They had one choice.
>Physics took over.
>Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
Incredible writing.