It would depend on their load I would think. Not every flight is full.
UPS MD-11 Crashes on Takeoff
- Thread starter MolaKule
- Start date
It would depend on their load I would think. Not every flight is full.
It's actually pretty darned good on a long-haul passenger jet, such as a 787, full of passengers, when you look at it in seat miles per gallon.
For a cargo plane carrying 200,000lbs of cargo so far, from Louisville to Honolulu, you'd want to compare it to the number of trucks it would take and how much fuel they would burn to carry that amount of cargo that far.
If you compare it to a Honda Civic carrying one guy to the vape store, then it won't look so good.
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I live in Louisville and we were lucky in one way... We had a south wind....If we would have had a northerly wind and the same thing happened...it would have gone down in a bunch of homes....
Pretty poor for an MD-11. Twinjets are far more efficient.
But cargo airlines are different. They tend to fly shorter routes, and there are a lot of older planes sold cheap. They don’t work them that hard. They can justify the fuel burn when the acquisition costs are low. FedEx and UPS were operating 727s for decades where they were mostly passenger castoffs. FedEx even developed (and sold) “hush kits” to make them quieter to comply with noise limits.
You can look at the UPS Airlines fleet. Other than the 747-8F, all older planes. I’m hearing all their MD-11 fleet was converted passenger planes. But I suppose they could justify the 747 for their longer routes since they need the range. I’ve heard that they ship stuff like Apple devices directly from the factories in China/India to consumers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines#Current_fleet
Shipping by air is a different dynamic though. You can’t load a truck from Louisville to Honolulu anyways. And Louisville serves as a logistics hub where it simplifies getting a package from point A to point B where every endpoint flies to/from Louisville more or less. I believe they have smaller hubs though to cover regional transport. The other thing is how fast it needs to get there. It’s a lot cheaper for UPS to send a truck to ship from Atlanta to Phoenix than it is to send the equivalent in two flights. Most of their shipping is via ground. Shipping by air comes at a premium price.
The cheapest way to transport is by ship or rail. That used to be the Temu model where they would consolidate shipments into container and then it went to logistics shippers in the US that would get it to the customer.
Yes they would put the trailers on a train which runs 24 hrs a day.
When I lived in Louisville, I was often by the north end airport, where the planes taxiing and waiting to take-off from the runway where this happened were plainly visible both from surface streets and the interstate.
UPS at least when I was watching and lived there(2010-2020) was the main user of that runway. Every time I was on a passenger flight there, in my case on 717s, 737s, MD-88s, and MD-90s over the course of several different flights, were always on the other runway.
It was very rare that I'd drive by the airport and NOT see an MD-11 either taking off or at least in line to take off. Seeing 3 or more MD-11s in line was a regular sight. 747s weren't as common, but I still saw plenty of them. About the only other thing I'd see mixed in in UPS livery were some 767s. This was as recently as 2020, and I'd go out on a limb and say that, considering that I think all UPS international shipments and a significant amount of domestic air shipments pass through Louisville at some point in their journey, at least then UPS probably would have been in a bind if something crazy had happened like all the MD-11s being grounded.
Reading up a bit this morning, I see that Fed-Ex has apparently set a 2032 date to retire the MD-11s, while UPS is saying "sometime in the future" but hasn't said when. Assuming this accident doesn't make UPS take a look at the whole fleet, I'd not be surprised if a bunch of ex-Fed-Ex MD-11s end up at UPS.
Propflux01
$100 Site Donor 2026
Last I read they had about 26k of fuel, or close to 180,000 lbs of fuel.
My dad was an A&P mechanic for PanAm and worked on the 707, 727, 747 and DC-10 at MIA maintenance base.
Sometimes the mechanics would have to walk off the job if management tried to pressure them to sign off on an unsafe aircraft that needed to be grounded and had a major safety issue. The MIA union would immediately call JFK maintenance base and all the mechanics there would walk off the job in New York (and vise versa).
The machinists union could NOT be bullied by Pan Am management.
He needed to walk off the job about 20 times in his 27 year career at Pan Am.
If a flight is delayed 8 hours….. too bad. The passengers can wait.
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I’m not saying the UPS mechanic did anything wrong.
Was he pressured to get that MD-11 in the air due to tight timeline and no spare MD-11 to transfer all cargo to backup aircraft ?
The mechanics that touched that MD-11 might have already hired attorneys and keeping their mouth shut.
Wait...you can't drive a truck to Honolulu?!? Crap.
My point was to look at the distance and fuel burned compared to a motor vehicle such as a freight truck. Not to drive to Honolulu. LOL.
Shipping generally prioritizes cabin size and access, sure. But I was responding to a general question about fuel economy and how it is looked at in jets, compared to motor vehicles, because they were the point of reference for the person asking the question. Terms like fuel economy or gas mileage point to our normal point of reference.
Most of us have no point of reference for fuel economy for rail or ships. But my guess is that rail is easily the most efficient since you are moving on steel wheels on steel rails, which results in extremely low rolling resistance. I have no clue with ships. My best guess would be that rail is more efficient, strictly on energy required to move a given amount of weight over a given distance.
I believe I read at some point years ago that a 747-400 fully loaded with passengers achieved somewhere north of 40 seat mpg. That's impressive. Especially considering it is typically traveling well north of 500mph. I'm sure a 777, A350, or 787 would do fairly significantly better.
Interesting stories about Pan Am!
This situation with the UPS jet is all wild speculation. It may have had nothing to do with the issues the mechanics were dealing with. From what I can recall, UPS has had a good safety record. My brother worked as a facility manager for UPS (ground) and they had very strict safety protocols when it comes to the ground operations. I doubt that was any different for air. Accidents happen. I pray there was no negligence involved. I'd hate to see more people hurt due to an error. But where there are people or machines designed by people, there will be failures. Even in the best of systems.
It's hard not to wonder, though. My mind has been running wild with possibilities. My hope is that it was some kind of freak thing that would have been hard to detect and pin on a person or group, but at the same time, something from which enough can be learned to prevent a repeat. Time and the investigation will tell. They have a great batting average of figuring out exactly what happened. It's just slow and painful along the way.
UPS, btw, does a great job when tragedy strikes. One of my employees lost her husband, who was a UPS driver, in a tragic traffic accident a couple years ago. They really wrapped around that family and took good care of them. A company like that is made up of people, and they have great people, from what I've seen. My prayers are not just for the families, but also for the friends and colleagues of them and the others on the ground who have loss, too. They're all hurting so badly from this. I cannot imagine the grief.
slo town
$200 Site Donor 2026
One of my lifelong friends (we met in first grade in 1959) was a Captain for UPS, flying their trans-oceanic 747-400s. He flew for UPS for 20-ish years, finally retiring 10 or 15 years ago. He took a lot of pride in his occupation and knowing him for as long as I have, I'm 100% certain he was an excellent pilot. Shortly before he retired he told me his income. BIG BUCKS!
Something he mentioned about flying freight was he was never 100% certain what was inside his aircraft. Interesting thought. Loading crews could be hard on things at times. I remember my friend telling me he had to leave the cockpit one time and yell "Easy on the airplane!". Freighters took a beating. It might have been his DC-8 days (when he first started flying freight), but he said you could lean out the cockpit window and actually see an outward bulge on the side of the fuselage opposite the loading door.
Scott
Something he mentioned about flying freight was he was never 100% certain what was inside his aircraft. Interesting thought. Loading crews could be hard on things at times. I remember my friend telling me he had to leave the cockpit one time and yell "Easy on the airplane!". Freighters took a beating. It might have been his DC-8 days (when he first started flying freight), but he said you could lean out the cockpit window and actually see an outward bulge on the side of the fuselage opposite the loading door.
Scott
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Wait- as in the fuselage was dented outward or like a balloon that returned to normal?
slo town
$200 Site Donor 2026
No, the area was permanently bulged outward, from stuff getting rammed against it during loading. He said you could see it clearly. The more I think about it, it was probably his DC-8 days. Some of the charter companies he flew for in the beginning of his career were flying some really old birds.
Scott
Odd. That would be structural damage that unless it was within limits would make the aircraft unairworthy until repaired.
Having worked on some of the last flying DC-8's in the U.S. I can assure anyone that at no time was one ever loaded to the point where the fuselage bulged. That would have produced significant visible damage on the inside that even our most incompetent inspector never would have missed.
slo town
$200 Site Donor 2026
I hear you, but my friend wouldn't make it up. We've been friends for 67 years!!!! He's never been one to exaggerate or BS.
Yes, I'm certain there are limits to this type of thing. I've flown on worn out old Saab 340s that had probably had far more badness somewhere in its airframe.
Scott
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Ships are actually more efficient because of scale.
https://uniserve.co.uk/rail-freight-vs-sea-freight/
The Gap exclusively ships their clothes by aircraft due to fashion changing so quickly.
They are but for certain time sensitive items or weirdly enough fashion items they have to be flown.
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