A quiet Tuesday afternoon in Louisville turned into a nightmare. At around 5:13 p.m., the cargo jet for UPS Airlines flight 2976 lifted off from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport with flames bursting from its left engine. Just moments later, the Boeing MD-11 (a 34-year-old workhorse of the skies) careened off-course and smashed into an industrial lot near a scrap‐metal yard.
Among the dead are three UPS pilots—Captain Richard Wartenberg, First Officer Lee Truitt and Relief Captain Dana Diamond—whose names the airline has confirmed. On the ground, the toll continues to climb. At last count, at least 13 lives have been lost, including a child, with several still unaccounted for.
One of the missing is 45-year-old mother of two, Angela “Angie” Anderson. Earlier that afternoon she kissed her boyfriend goodbye and drove to the nearby scrap‐metal recycling yard to drop off material. Security footage shows her arriving at 5:11 p.m.—just minutes before the plane came down. Her boyfriend, Donald Henderson, recalls telling her to “go ahead, take it”—the scrap load—and now struggles with the grief of losing the woman he called “all I got.”
Witnesses and security camera footage show the aircraft’s left wing ablaze during take-off followed by a dramatic left roll and rapid descent into the lot. The impact triggered an inferno that engulfed the plane, fuel tanks and several nearby structures. Debris was strewn across two runways and the surrounding industrial complex.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are combing through the aircraft’s maintenance records, including a recent stint in San Antonio where a crack in the center wing fuel tank had been logged. The plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder have been recovered.
For the community of Louisville—home to UPS’s massive Worldport hub—the blow is especially heavy. As fires raged and rescue teams scoured the scene, a candlelight vigil convened by the local Teamsters local union drew hundreds who came to mourn and remember. “This incident was so sudden, so unexpected,” said Mayor Craig Greenberg, his voice heavy with emotion.
Amid the sorrow, the questions remain: How could a three-engine aircraft so early in its climb lose control so quickly? What chain of events—mechanical, operational or otherwise—led to this devastation? Investigators caution it may be up to two years before they issue a full report. Until then, families wait in anguish, and a city steadies itself after a day that no one could have taken for granted. citeturn0news13turn0news10