The cause of the deadly Nov. 4 crash of a UPS cargo airplane in Louisville, Kentucky, still has not been confirmed, but some aviation experts have pointed to the fact that the plane was over three decades old. However, while passenger planes are constantly being updated with new iterations from Boeing and Airbus, it turns out that using an antiquated plane isn’t all that rare for cargo aviation — even as UPS has now grounded the model in question.
Jet built in 1991
The jet that crashed was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11F that was manufactured in 1991, according to the Aviation Safety Network. This model has been a “workhorse in the cargo industry for years, but it had gained a reputation as an aircraft that was behind the times,” said USA Today. The MD-11 started as a passenger jet, but that ended more than a decade ago “due to its high fuel and maintenance costs.” But it has remained a common model for cargo companies, including UPS.
McDonnell Douglas dealt with longstanding financial issues in the 1990s before merging with Boeing. It “built only 200 aircraft between 1998-2000 before discontinuing the MD-11,” said the Louisville Courier Journal. The MD-11s are an “older design. They’re not as fuel-efficient. They require more maintenance than later-generation airplanes,” said John Cox, the founder of aviation consultancy Safety Operating Systems, to USA Today. They also have kind of a reputation of being a hard airplane to land,” said Ross “Rusty” Aimer, the CEO of Aero Consulting Experts, to the outlet.
Following the crash, UPS decided to temporarily take the MD-11 out of service. This was done “out of an abundance of caution and in the interest of safety,” UPS said in a statement. The company “made this decision proactively at the recommendation of the aircraft manufacturer. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our employees and the communities we serve.”
Aging fleets
While some might be surprised to learn that a 34-year-old plane was still flying, this is “not so unusual in the world of air cargo,” said CNN. Planes often have a “much longer lifespan than the average flyer realizes,” and older models are typically “retired due to fuel economy, rather than wear-and-tear on the aircraft itself.” This is especially true if a plane isn’t in the air as much, and cargo planes generally “fly about 30% less than passenger jets.”
This trend of aging cargo planes is not unique to UPS, as FedEx “operates a similarly-aged fleet, including MD-11s that are among the oldest still flying commercially,” said Simple Flying. These aircraft often last longer than commercial planes because “cargo operations do not require modern passenger cabins, and the economics of converting used jets are far more favorable than buying new ones.”
Even though the MD-11 has a “poor safety record” and a “reputation for difficult landing behavior,” UPS has “only retired about 30% of its historic total of MD-11Fs,” said Simple Flying. But the company does have changes in the works, as UPS announced in 2023 that it had “begun a planned retirement of aging MD-11 freighters as part of a plan to renew the fleet with more fuel-efficient aircraft,” said supply chain site FreightWaves.
Many air cargo companies use planes that are this old