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AVIATION UPS MD-11 CRASH IN LOUISVILLE KENTUCKY Captain Steeeve: The End of the MD-11? (br> FAA Steps In After Louisville Crash PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HceHGdS-Xmg
The End of the MD-11? FAA Steps In After Louisville Crash Captain Steeeve 889K subscribers Nov 10, 2025 #captainsteeeve #md11 #faa The FAA has now taken the rare step of issuing an Emergency Airworthiness Directive and grounding every MD-11 operating in the United States. This came just days after the tragic crash in Kentucky, and today Captain Steeeve is reacting to this major development and explaining exactly what this means for the aviation world. In the episode, Steeeve breaks down what an Emergency Airworthiness Directive actually is, why the FAA uses it so sparingly, and what criteria must be met before regulators can shut down an entire aircraft type with no warning. He then explains how this grounding affects passenger flights, overnight cargo networks, and global logistics—because the MD-11 is heavily used by freight operators around the world. With this action from the FAA, Steeeve believes we may be looking at the permanent end of the MD-11 era. Even though the aircraft has a long service history, this directive signals that the risks now outweigh the benefits, and airlines are unlikely to invest in repairing, modifying, or re-certifying a fleet that is already aging. This is a major moment in aviation safety and a turning point for both passenger and cargo operations. Steeeve walks through the facts, the impact, and what may happen next. For business inquiries email us at: captainsteeeve@wearebv.com For press or general questions: peter@541co.com Disclaimer: Captain Steeeve is not a spokesperson for any airline or aviation authority. The opinions expressed in this video are solely his own and are based on his experience as a professional pilot. This analysis is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as an official statement from any airline, regulatory agency, or aviation organization. Want to know what watch I'm wearing? If you are from the US, visit Watchbuys.com and go to the PRIMUS collection under Hanhart. For everyone else, visit https://www.hanhart.com/en/. #captainsteeeve #md11 #faa #AirworthinessDirective #aviationnews #pilotreact #airplanecrash #CargoAviation #aviationsafety How this content was made Auto-dubbed Audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated. Learn more Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess Transcript 0:00 As NTSB investigators comb through wreckage of this deadly MD11 cargo plane crash in Louisville, Kentucky, dozens of MD11s now grounded by two of the nation's top parcel carriers, FedEx and UPS. UPS and FedEx said they are grounding their fleets of McDonald Douglas MD11 planes, quote, 'Out of an abundance of caution following a deadly crash at the UPS Global Aviation Hub in Kentucky.' All right, it looks like the domino effect has begun with the MD11 incident out of Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky. That horrific crash, the loss of life right now stands at 14. Three on the airplane, 11 on the ground, still nine people missing alto together. And over the weekend, UPS and FedEx both voluntarily grounded their fleet of MD11 aircraft. We're going to talk about what uh sort of an effect that has. And then late this weekend, the FAA came out with an emergency airworthiness directive. I've got that here for you. I'm going to 1:00 describe how that changes the picture on the MD11 and what impact and what scope of impact does that have on you and I, the traveling public, if any at all. So, what's an emergency airworthiness directive? Well, it's right here. And the FAA issues these very sparingly. Uh, but when they do, they're done quickly. Uh it the word emergency is hugely important here. Other airworthiness directives are things that are deliberate, intentional. They take time. They have a public hearing period where the public can comment. Boeing, you know, Airbus, whoever can come in and give testimony and lawyers and those things sometimes take weeks or months um to implement and they would be like a longer term recall of something or some repair that needs to get made. It's not in the public interest in terms of safety, but it is in terms of the long-term viability of a fleet to make sure that it does stay safe down the road. An emergency one though means that 2:02 there's an immediate need, and as you could see from the footage of that airplane going off uh the end of the runway and that horrific fireball and crash, the left engine completely separated from the MD11. And there's a history here, and that's the key. The history goes all the way back to the DC10 and that terrible American Airlines 191 crash back in 1979 out of O'Hare where they got up to about 500 ft and the left engine came completely off the DCT10, causing the left slats to to retract. That was a double failure. Basically, it made the things twice as bad on that airplane. Not only did they not have the thrust on the left side and that tendency of the airplane to yaw from the right side to the left into a left bank, but that left slat came up and the airplane just dipped and 110° later it impacted the ground. So there are concerns going all the way back to the late '7s with this type of aircraft 3:01 design, the trijet. The MD11 is basically the child of the DC10 if you can think about it that way. What's an emergency airworthiness directive? Well, it's something that's put out immediately to ground the entire fleet. And let me read to you from the beginning of this airworthiness directive, emergency airworthiness directive. Uh, and it's directed to the operators of the Boeing company, uh, models MD11 and MD11 Fox Trot airplanes. So, those two model airplanes have been grounded until further notice by the FAA. Why is it the Boeing company? I mean, I thought MD11 was McDonald Douglas. Well, the Boeing company bought or merged with McDonald Douglas back in the late '9s, and so it's been Boeing ever since. So, did Boeing design and build the airplane? No. They inherited it, though, when they when they purchased uh the McDonald Douglas Corporation. It gives you a little bit of a background. The emergency ad was prompted by an accident where the left-hand engine and this is real 4:02 important, I circled this, and the pylon detached from the airplane during takeoff. Uh, and then it goes on at the bottom of that paragraph to say, 'This condition could result in loss of continued safe flight and landing.' So, they're really concerned about that pylon. The pylon was the issue back in the DC10 era. They're concerned about it now. Now, I don't think they know exactly what happened yet. It's going to take a long time to determine this. Uh, whether it was the pylon that failed causing the engine to fail or the engine failure caused the pylon to fail. Either way, I know that the NTSB had come out and said initially uh in one of their on camera interviews that the pylon was intact. It was still attached to the wing. Uh so it it could be either one. We're not going to know until the either the preliminary or the the 12-month report comes out of which it was the chicken or the egg in in this case. It goes on in this report to say the FAA uh is issuing this ad because the agency has 5:01 determined the unsafe condition. key words now is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design. So the entire fleet of MD11s uh at least nationwide have been grounded. Now if there's MD11s that are being flown overseas, again I think it would be in the best interest of those airlines to make sure that they ground those airplanes, but I don't think the FAA has authorization over them to ground those aircraft. Now what's the scope of all of this? How many aircraft are we actually talking about? Well, we're talking about in at least from the uh UPS and FedEx world, uh we're talking about 9% of the UPS fleet. So, they've got the UPS has 27 of these aircraft. And out of those 27 aircraft, they've got a total of 292 airplanes. Comes out to roughly about 9%. That's a big hit. That's a big hit for UPS, especially coming into this busy uh holiday season. So, I'm going to talk in a second about 6:00 what do they do to make sure that their, you know, cargo gets transported during the busy holiday season. FedEx now owns 25 MD11s out of their fleet of 382 total airplanes. So, FedEx is a little bit bigger um than UPS. It's only 6.6% of their total fleet. But still, that's a big hit and for them in the wrong direction coming into the busy time of year. So, normally this time of year, FedEx and UPS will surge. They're out there looking for more capacity. Where do they get that extra capacity? They're going to get that extra capacity from American, Delta, United, Southwest, you name it. All the other airlines. They're going to look at some of the international haulers like World Airlines, Atlas, um you know, all of those. There's several bunch of outfits that fly 747s. They're also busier during the holiday season as well. So if they have excess capacity, FedEx, UPS and those Amazon is another one that is going to buy up that extra capacity. So again, losing 9% of 7:03 your fleet uh before you go into the the busy season where you want to increase by 10, 15, maybe even 20% this time of year is a double whammy on UPS. Does it impact the passenger business? Is there anybody that flies the MD11 with passengers in it anymore? The answer to that is no. The last airline to fly passengers in an MD11 was KLM. And the last flight they had was October of 2014 where they carried passengers. Since then, all those MD11s have been converted over to cargo hauling airplanes. Now, why why do we stop flying passengers on the MD11? Was it cuz it was unsafe? Nope. It just wasn't very efficient. Uh I know at my airline, American Airlines, we bought not a lot, but we bought a few MD11s uh in the '9s and we only flew them for about four or 5 years and then we we sold them. Uh I think they weren't happy with the product overall. I think they had some maintenance issues and not like wings or you know engines falling off, but just 8:00 they were just they had to keep up with them, right? It was too much work and it wasn't as fuel efficient as we had hoped for. And right about that time in the mid90s into the early 2000s, all the airlines were getting out of the four and three engine uh airplanes and into two engine airplanes much more efficient. Let me give you an example of a trip from Louisville, Kentucky to Honolulu, which was uh UPS 2976. They're going to carry on an MD11 220,000 lbs of gas to get out there and have all their reserve fuel when they get there. A typical 767 is going to carry n 160 165,000 pounds of gas about two about a third less. So it costs a third more to operate an MD11. So do I believe that um u UPS and FedEx are are trying to get out of the MD11 business? Probably. They voluntarily uh grounded their fleet 9:01 over the weekend. Now would they have done it coming into the busy uh holiday season? No. They probably would have done it sometime next year, not for safety reasons, but just for cost reasons. Um, I think they're looking to get out of it. However, their hand has been forced by this emergency airworthiness directive. Let me continue to read here. At the bottom it says uh see author this this airworthiness directive authorizes agencies to forego notice and comment procedures for rules when the agency for good cause finds uh that those uh procedures are impractical, unnecessary or contrary to the public interest. Okay, that's lawyer speak for we can implement this thing overnight and ground the entire fleet because we're concerned about public safety. That's exactly what that means. It goes on down here to say an unsafe condition exists that requires the immediate adoption of this emergency ad to all uh known US owners and operators 10:02 of these airplanes. So, they just reiterated what they said in the earlier paragraph that this is a safety issue. They've identified a safety issue and they're going to ground the fleet to do the inspections necessary. On the last page, it talks about inspection and other actions. And under that paragraph, it says, 'As of receipt of this emergency ad, further flight is prohibited until the airplane is inspected and all applicable corrective actions are performed using a method approved by the manager.' The manager would be the FAA. All right. Having said that, they're going to start now their long work of looking at this airplane. uh and inspecting it and coming up with what the fix could be potentially. They've got to identify the problem first and they've got to identify a fix. I think the MD11 is going to be down for a very very long time. And I think this is just my guess on this. I don't think you're going to see the MD flying ever again. Um I think UPS and FedEx are probably going to retire that fleet of 11:00 airplane. They'll go out this next year and they'll replace it with other types, probably two engine airplanes, uh, that do the same job for a whole lot less cost on their part, and they'll be done with the headache that basically is the MD11 at this point. Why do airlines and why do cargo haulers have so many different types of airplanes? Have you ever wondered that? I've wondered that many times because at my airline, there's, I don't know, six, seven different types of aircraft. And you think it would be much more efficient to have one airplane or at least one manufacturer. Southwest is a good example. They fly only 737s. They don't fly any other airplane. And so their training costs are less, their maintenance costs are less. They're much more efficient in regards of their fleet composition. However, there's a there's a danger that they run. And the danger is this. If the FAA ever comes out with an emergency airworthiness directive and they ground the entire 737 fleet, Southwest is out of business. And when the MAX was grounded, it was grounded 12:01 for what, I think, seven or eight months. It was a long time that the Max was grounded. It might have even been longer than that, but at any rate, it was grounded for a long time. And Southwest would not have survived that. having diversification in your fleet, you it's survivable to have one aircraft type grounded for a certain period of time over another one because you can continue to operate. Uh it also ups your cost because you're you're flying Airbus and Boeing and different types of airplanes. It also limits for Southwest what they can do. Um they're pretty much just a domestic airline because the 737 has limited legs. It can't fly, you know, to deep south in South America. It can't fly all the way to deep points in Europe. So again, they're kind of limited in what they can do. So an airline or a cargo hauler will have a diversified fleet so that they can get halfway around the world if they need to to deliver cargo or to deliver passengers. So the only other airline that flies MD11s in the US is Western Global. I couldn't find any information 13:00 on how many MD11s they have, but if they've got them, they're going to have to ground them. All right, so 9% of UPS, 6.6% of FedEx. Um, why was there no emergency airworthiness directive issued for Air India 171? All right, you some of you are thinking about that right now. You're thinking, 'Hey, wait a minute. That airplane had passengers on board and the fuel control switches were in question on that thing. Why didn't they issue an emergency airworthiness directive, ground the entire 787 fleet around the world and go and inspect all those uh fuel control switches?' Well, two airlines voluntarily did. Air India and Korean Air both voluntarily went and inspected all of their fuel control switches. They didn't find anything wrong with them. Many times what doesn't get done or what doesn't get said is just as loud as what does get done and does get said. So, if you're thinking, you know, well, the FAA is in the tank with Boeing and they're just out to look 14:00 to protect Boeing and I get a lot of that stuff in my comments. Uh they they aren't right cuz this is going to be a a hurt to Boeing for them to ground the MD11 fleet. If they had needed to ground the uh 787 fleet, they would have done it, folks. They would have done it right. Their their main purpose is public safety and to make sure that those airplanes are safe. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that 787 that crashed in uh the Air India crash 171. That's why they didn't issue even go out and voluntarily inspect the airplanes. They knew that there was nothing wrong with those airplanes. There was a different cause at play there for why those fuel control switches transition from run to cutoff just after rotate. So you ever wonder the question, how does the a crew on an airplane find out that their airplane has been grounded? Because uh when they come out with this airworthiness directive, they don't give any advanced notice. It's just they issue it. And from that moment, that second forward, 15:02 every airplane is grounded. Well, what if you're already in the air? What if you're taxiing out? What if you're landing and coming into a gate? Well, you're going to get a message that looks like this in the cockpit. It comes over your A cars screen and it's an A car's message, which is basically texting for airplanes, where anybody on the ground can, not anybody, but the your dispatcher can text you a message. And this one reads uh that it's uh part one of two, but it says, 'Please return to block per UPS MD11 are not to depart effective immediately.' So, if you're taxing out and you get that message, guess what? You're going to turn around and go back to the gate. If you're airborne, you're going to go to your destination and land and that's going to be it. So, again, these are interesting things. uh something you don't normally see, but we got a picture uh that somebody took of a actual AAR's screen when they issued this airworthiness directive. And uh at that point then they've got to land the airplane or 16:00 they've got to taxi back to the gate. No more flying for the MD11. The entire MD11 fleet is now grounded uh until further notice. How is that going to impact uh the holiday season here coming up? Well, it's not going to be a good news for UPS and FedEx. They're going to have to scramble at this point to find capacity to carry all the boxes and cargo that needs to go during the busy uh holiday season. I'm certainly sure that they will find it. But it's also going to uh impact all the other airlines. Is it going to impact the passenger business? No, I don't think so. Um not at all. But the cargo business, yeah, absolutely. There might be longer delays this year. And you're probably going to see a little uh paragraph or sentence uh when you check the tracking on your box that says due to uh you know airworthiness directives from the FAA uh expect longer than normal transportation times for your box. It may take longer to get there. That's a small inconvenience compared to the importance of keeping these airplanes safe and flying. And 17:01 certainly the 14 families that have been impacted by the fatalities here uh are not interested in least about anybody else's packages getting any place on time. So we want to make sure that there's not another 14 families that are impacted or even more somewhere down the road. The FAA is doing the right thing. This is an airworthiness directive. You don't see them very often. Now you know the impact of it and why the FAA issued it over the weekend. As we get more details about the uh about the fleet and uh and what's happening, especially with this crash in Louisville, we'll come right back to you with those details. Well, now you know. I'm Captain Steve. Fly safe. So, if you'd like to see some other videos about UPS 2976 or any other incidents recently that kind of fall into this category, check out one of these videos.

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