NTSB hearing reveals prior warnings before fatal UPS MD-11 crash

Federal investigators concluded a two-day National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing in Washington on Wednesday (May 20, 2026) into the November 4, 2025, crash of UPS Flight 2976, a Boeing MD-11F cargo aircraft that killed 15 people after its left engine and pylon separated during takeoff from Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky. The hearing revealed that Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)had known for years about cracking risks in a critical aft pylon bearing component linked to at least 10 prior incidents, though only four were formally reported to regulators, and replacement of the part was recommended, not mandated.

“The NTSB’s Preliminary Report and early hours of its Public Hearing show that Boeing, UPS, and ST Aerospace (aircraft maintenance provider for UPS) MD-11 engine pylon structural safety analyses and inspection and maintenance processes were clearly incorrect, unsafe, and insufficient to prevent this accident,” said Bradley M. Cosgrove, partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, who filed the wrongful death lawsuits in Kentucky regarding the November 2025 crash of a UPS cargo jet.

The Chicago-based aviation law firm Clifford Law Offices represents seven of the victims’ families who lost relatives in the crash, as well as several other people who were severely injured.

The NTSB’s preliminary report, issued about a month after the crash, revealed that the aircraft’s left engine and pylon separated from the wing during rotation and takeoff. In its initial fact gathering, the NTSB found mechanical problems involving fatigue fractures with the aircraft’s left pylon.

“Despite 10 prior aft pylon bearing failures from 2002 to 2022 and Boeing’s own 2007 Safety Review Board (SRB) conclusion that bearing failure could cause aft pylon lug damage, Boeing management did not change its determination that aft pylon bearing failure was not a safety issue,” reads the Clifford Law Offices release. “The potential monetary cost of this aft pylon bearing unsafe condition determination and re-certification could have been a factor in Boeing’s decision and inaction,” it added.

Only four of those ten incidents were formally reported to the FAA. Boeing had flagged the part as prone to cracking in a service letter as far back as 2011, but recommended, not required, replacement.

The NTSB investigation document reads, “Boeing Service Letter MD-11-SL-54-104-A, dated February 7, 2011, informed operators of four previously reported bearing race failures (on three different airplanes) involving P/N S00399-1 spherical bearing assemblies. Specifically, each failure had initiated at the design recess groove on the interior surface of the bearing race.”

NTSB investigators noted parallels to the 1979 American Airlines Flight 191 crash at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, where the engine and pylon also detached from a similar aircraft (the DC-10) upon takeoff rotation.

Boeing staff admitted that the failed aft pylon spherical bearing should have been categorised as a Principal Structural Element (PSE) during the original MD-11 FAA certification process decades ago. Boeing also admitted that their subsequent Continuing Operational Safety (COS) program failed to identify that PSE deficiency and the catastrophic potential of an aft pylon bearing failure to cause premature fatigue failure of the adjoining aft pylon lugs.

As a result of this UPS crash investigation findings, Boeing determined that the aft pylon bearing is PSE, that its failure could create an unsafe condition, and that they have taken short-term action to get the grounded MD-11 fleet flying again and are engaged in the aft pylon bulkhead, lug and bearing assembly re-certification process with the FAA.

The FAA also admitted that it didn’t identify this aft pylon bearing PSE and unsafe condition decades ago. “There was a misunderstanding initially, 20 years ago, about the severity of the event that might result from the failure of this bearing,” said Melanie Violette, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) engineer. Were it known that a bearing failure could severely damage the lug, “that would have changed the safety determination,” she added.

Cosgrove said, “It is unbelievable how Boeing repeatedly fails to properly design, certify, and maintain the airworthiness of its fleet. The communication among parties as to how a plane is to be safely maintained simply isn’t there either. Boeing clearly isn’t learning any lessons from its checkered design, certification, and continuing airworthiness history, and its transparency to its customers about what needs to be done must be examined.”

“Boeing, UPS, ST Aerospace, FAA, and other organisational failures led to this crash. Boeing has had years of in-service, pre-crash warnings in several fatal Boeing airplane crash cases (Turkish Airlines 737 at Amsterdam, the two recent 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, and this UPS MD-11 crash in Louisville, KY), and in each case it didn’t take adequate action to prevent any of them, causing hundreds of deaths and injuries and costing them and their insurers billions of dollars in settlements to victim families and government fines.”