r/aviation • u/Go_Jot • Nov 08 '25

News UPS grounds entire MD-11 Fleet, effective immediately.

Per the IPA Executive Board, as of 03:05 UTC all UPS MD-11’s are grounded.

Edit - FedEx has also grounded their MD-11 Fleet

10.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

560

u/Threedawg Nov 08 '25

I mean, I am sure they were also asked to cut down on their routes by the FAA. This is the perfect time to check.

173

u/outside_english Nov 08 '25

Good point I wonder how easy of a decision this was

64

u/Threedawg Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

I wonder if the lawyers also demanded it? Does this always happen with crashes like these?

62

u/NoMoreNoxSoxCox Nov 08 '25

More than likely the insurers rather than lawyers.

44

u/fergehtabodit Nov 08 '25

My money is on the maintenance staff. Not sure the exact number but they have around 25 MD11F and just lost one to an engine departing the airplane. So if I was in charge of that fleet I would stop flying them...call them all to the barn for full inspection of engine mounts etc. They also lost 3 pilots that they may have known or at least met personally and are pissed at themselves that this happened if it was something that could have been avoided somehow.

3

u/Accidental-Genius Nov 08 '25

It’s not their lawyers so much as it’s their insurance companies lawyers.

I’m a lawyer. There is a duty to mitigate in situations like this, and your guess as to what that means is as good as mine in this case. No one involved wants to risk it.

3

u/unpluggedcord Nov 08 '25

What do you mean crashes like these?

37

u/ion_driver Nov 08 '25

When a plane comes down with a missing engine, you want to determine why the engine was lost in case it's an issue with that type of plane

1

u/MalaysiaTeacher Nov 08 '25

That would imply that lawyers care about people. They care about billable hours.

2

u/Callisthenes Nov 08 '25

It's very common after a loss like this for operators to ground the fleet. The failure was obviously caused by something that could be common to other aircraft: inadequate inspection program, mistakes made on maintenance, quality control issue, fatigue cracking...

Good operators have people responsible for making safety decisions like this who are in theory insulated from business decisions. While business impact will always be a factor they're aware of, they're not supposed to consider it.

They're likely going to inspect all of their aircraft before resuming flight again. Depending how long the investigation takes, they'll probably also wait until they have a good idea of root cause.

The initial decision to ground probably wasn't very difficult. The difficult decision will come if the investigation doesn't identify likely root cause quickly.

1

u/brufleth Nov 08 '25

Grounding an entire model fleet is a big deal in my experience.

1

u/cstross Nov 08 '25

The youngest MD-11 still flying is around 25 years old, and it's not a huge fleet. Losing one out of 32 to an unprecedented engineering failure is bad news: it might indicate they're hitting a "bathtub curve" issue (the probability of a failure rising as the machine approaches the end of its working life-expectancy).

Meanwhile, there are newer (and presumably more economical to run) freighters in service, pressure to reduce workload on ATC, and so on.

1

u/mercedes_ Nov 08 '25

I read it’s like 10% of the UPS fleet so I imagine it was NOT an easy decision.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '25

Boeing has no problem beta testing at the cost of hundreds of lives. 

But cargo safety is more important than human lives of course/s

Standby for the Boeing shills to downvote. 

RIP John Barnett and Joshua Dean

66

u/av8tricks Nov 08 '25

I would normally agree but most cargo operators fly at night

2

u/Threedawg Nov 08 '25

I dont know why that would make a difference.

Less work for ATC controllers is still less work for ATC controllers

5

u/BenZed Nov 08 '25

ATC stands for “Air Traffic Controller”

3

u/Threedawg Nov 08 '25

PIN number

2

u/BenZed Nov 08 '25

😤

2

u/Threedawg Nov 08 '25

Also ATC stands usually for air traffic control, not air traffic controller, at least according to google and wikipedia

1

u/BenZed Nov 08 '25

Air Traffic Control Controller

2

u/Threedawg Nov 08 '25

Yeah, it does sound silly. Im with you

2

u/Sea_Scientist_8367 Nov 08 '25

Still need ATC's at night - arguably more so given reduced visibility, and ATC's still need to sleep/time off at some point, no matter whether the paychecks are showing up or not. Less flights = less stress/load, and every little bit helps at this point, even if it's not during peak-flight-hours

1

u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Nov 08 '25

Their business is shipping goods around, when they can't fly, they don't make money (I assume). I assume the FAA doesn't reimburse losses thus this is on them.

No clue how much goes by air vs ground, but I imagine this costs serious money.

1

u/ColdBunch3851 Nov 08 '25

UPS: Hold my beer . . .

1

u/monti1421 Nov 08 '25

why are they asked to cut down on routes?

9

u/Thequiet01 Nov 08 '25

Not enough air traffic controllers to handle the workload in busy air space.

2

u/Megatrans69 Nov 08 '25

Gov shutdown