Steph Deschamps / February 7, 2025
The death toll from the crash of a cargo plane that crashed on takeoff on Tuesday after one of its engines broke loose at Louisville airport in the east-central United States has risen to 12, according to a new report published on Wednesday evening, which still mentions several missing persons.
“I'm deeply saddened to announce that the death toll has risen to 12 and that several people are still missing,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said on X Wednesday evening. The death toll had previously been eleven. The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 belonging to the US carrier UPS, which was en route to Hawaii, crashed late on Tuesday afternoon, destroying buildings and generating an impressive plume of thick smoke.
According to Todd Inman, one of the investigators from the U.S. Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) dispatched to the scene, airport surveillance camera images “show the left engine detaching from the wing during acceleration on takeoff”. The engine remained “on the airfield”, he told reporters, adding that the two flight recorders, commonly known as “black boxes”, had been sent to Washington for analysis. An amateur video broadcast by local channel WLKY showed the plane's left engine on fire as it skimmed the ground in an attempt to take off, before exploding further away. Other images then showed a large blaze spreading over several hundred meters in an area of hangars and parking lots. The aircraft came to rest nearly five kilometers from the airport, according to police, and collided “quite directly” with an oil recycling facility, according to the governor of Kentucky. Three crew members were on board, according to UPS, whose airline division is based in Louisville, its main U.S. air hub.