The UPS aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, a cargo variant of the old three-engined widebody Douglas DC-10 airliner. In fact, this one was originally delivered to Thai Airways International as a passenger DC-10 back in 1991 before being bought by UPS and converted to a cargo hauler in 2006.
If you're old enough to remember 1979 and are any kind of aviation geek, then the first thing this should remind you of is American Airlines Flight 191, which was a DC-10 that had its left engine fall off while departing Chicago for Los Angeles in October of that year. To this day it remains the deadliest commercial aviation accident ever in the continental US.
I still vividly remember that the cause of the crash was traced to the procedures used by American Airlines to remove and replace the engines. The Wikipedia article goes into a lot of detail on it.
I wonder if the cause of this crash will be the same?
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