How Kentucky UPS plane crash unfolded and what could have caused it

At least 11 people have died and more than a dozen are injured after a UPS cargo plane crashed while taking off from an airport in Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday evening.Aviation experts who spoke to BBC Verify believe the plane crashed after one engine failed and another appeared to be damaged during take-off.It is unclear what caused the plane to crash, prompting a massive fireball to erupt after it failed to take-off from the runway.

Footage showed fire had already engulfed one wing of the aircraft while it was attempting to take off, which may have spread through the plane and caused the explosion, or the jet could have caught fire after colliding with an object on the ground.The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) – which is investigating the crash – said they have recovered airport CCTV footage that shows the plane’s left engine falling off from the wing during takeoff.The agency has also recovered the cockpit flight recorder and the flight data recorder, known as the black box, from the wreckage, said the NTSB’s Todd Inman.What is also apparent is that the 38,000 gallons (144,000 litres) of fuel on board the MD-11 jet needed for the flight likely escalated the blaze, which quickly spread to several buildings beyond the runway and burned for hours.BBC Verify has been analysing footage that emerged overnight to piece together how the crash unfolded.

UPS uses Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport as a distribution hub for its global operations and its Flight 2976 was at the start of a 4,300 mile journey to Honolulu in Hawaii when the cargo plane attempted to take off.Data from tracking website FlightRadar24 shows the plane began to taxi along the 17R runway at around 17:15 local time (22:15 GMT) and managed to reach a top speed of 214mph (344km/h).But verified footage shows that by the time the plane reached this speed a fire had completely engulfed its left wing and the aircraft struggled to climb away from the runway before the explosion.The NTSB said the plane’s engine was on fire as it was working to take off and then detached from the wing.

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