During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call today, UPS announced the decision to retire their 31-strong fleet of MD-11Fs. This comes following the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 2976 in Louisville last November, which killed 15 people. According to an NTSB preliminary report on the accident, metal fatigue in the left engine pylon may have been a cause or contributing factor.
This prompted all three US MD-11F operators - UPS, FedEx, and Western Global Airlines to ground their fleets. The FAA quickly released an emergency airworthiness directive with no solution yet, meaning the MD-11s are grounded indefinitely.
UPS’s MD-11s make up a small part of their fleet, but it’s still a substantial amount of metal to have sitting around at airports across the world. It makes more financial sense for them to just be done with them. The MD-11s are quite old, and their days were already numbered before the crash.
I believe there are small rumblings of Western Global taking the decision to retire their MD-11s.
If that is false, it is still sad since the tri-jets are iconic. It is sad to see the end of an era for these beautiful aircraft, but financially it makes sense.
If any airline gets a 747 it’s used or leased from some other operator. There are still 747s of course but 747-8 is the least sold 747 variant, at this time it’s only used by niche cargo operations, and big cargo companies, 747 basically has no future because technology is already advanced and twin engines can make long etops operations with big profits that eliminates the need of a 3 or 4 engine aircraft unfortunately, those airplanes were designed when Etops was not a thing 767 was the first airplane that could make etops and then they developed the airplanes further.
Them being out of production is not the point, the point is that they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. Those 747-8Fs are going to be flown until the wings fall off.
I had my credit photo taken on December 19, 2021, at PANC/ANC Airport. I noticed the window of the Western Global Airlines MD-11 (Tri-Jet) departing next. Western Global Airlines would like to continue operating or storing the MD-11 aircraft. It’s been a long time since I last heard of them at PANC/ANC Airport. UPS Airlines is currently operating the end service and will be retiring the MD-11.
