LAGOS NOVEMBER 5TH (NEWSRANGERS)-At least seven people were killed after a United Parcel Service cargo plane was involved in a “catastrophic crash” near Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport on Tuesday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said.
The death toll is likely to grow, Beshear said late Tuesday. He added that first responders were on-site and “working hard to extinguish the fire and continue the investigation.”
“Please, pray for the families affected, Louisville and all of Kentucky. We are hurting right now after a heartbreaking day,” the governor said in a statement on social media.
Fully fueled UPS plane crashes shortly after takeoff in Louisville, KY
Fire and smoke mark where a UPS cargo plane crashed near Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on Nov. 4, 2025 in Louisville, Ky. The fully fueled plane crashed shortly after takeoff with a shelter-in-place order issued for within 5 miles of the airport.
Flight 2976 crashed at around 5:15 p.m. local time as it was departing for Honolulu from Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. According to Biven, the plane went down about 3 miles south of the airfield.
Three crew members were onboard the plane at the time of the incident, UPS and officials said. During a news conference late Tuesday, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg confirmed that those killed in the incident were the three crew members and four others who were not on the plane.
Earlier, Jonathan Biven, a public safety officer for the Louisville airport, reported that 11 people were injured and were transported to local hospitals. Beshear previously said some of the victims had sustained serious injuries.
Video footage of the crash appeared to show the plane taking off with fire on one wing, and a huge fireball erupted as it hit the ground. Several buildings in an industrial area beyond the runway were on fire after the crash, with thick black smoke rising into the sky.
UPS plane crash in Louisville, Kentucky: Here’s what we know about the deadly accident.
The crash and fire prompted a massive emergency response from state and local agencies, including multiple fire departments and law enforcement agencies. The Louisville Metro Police Department warned on social media that there was an active scene near the airport with fire and debris, and urged people to avoid the area.
“This will be an ongoing active scene for the next several days. We don’t know how long it’s going to take to render that scene safe,” said Louisville Police Chief Paul Humphrey.
The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the incident. The FAA said the NTSB will lead the investigation.
Emergency crews are searching for additional victims
More than 100 firefighters were at the scene on Tuesday searching for additional victims and working to suppress some hot spots where the crash occurred, according to Greenberg.
By 10:30 p.m., Louisville Fire Chief Brian O’Neill said the fire was “almost entirely” contained and crews were beginning a grid search for victims.
The mayor added that 28 people from the NTSB will be arriving in Louisville on Wednesday morning. “They’re sending a large crew to do the investigation and deal with this disaster,” Greenberg said.
Employees of affected businesses have been accounted for
Employees of businesses that were affected by the crash have been accounted for, according to Greenberg.
“They have accounted for the individuals that they’re aware of in terms of their employees or people that were on their property,” Greenberg said. “Either accounted for them alive or as some of those four victims. We’re not aware of any that are missing right now.”
Earlier, Beshear said authorities believe the main area hit by the crash included two businesses: Kentucky Petroleum Recycling and Grade A Auto Parts.
Beshear said Kentucky Petroleum Recycling was “hit pretty directly.” As for Grade A Auto Parts, the governor said the business accounted for all of its employees except for two people.
“Because of the nature of these facilities, it may be some time before we can account for everyone or know that no one else was on the grounds,” Beshear said.
Louisville airfield temporarily closed, departing flights canceled
The security line at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport was empty following the crash, according to the Courier Journal. The airport is also known by its former names, Standiford Field and Louisville International Airport.
“Aircraft incident confirmed at SDF,” the airport posted on its X account. “At this time, the airfield is closed.”
Biven confirmed Tuesday night that runway 1129 was open and all departing flights were canceled for the night.
“We’re asking anyone who is traveling out of SDF airport tonight and tomorrow, they should contact their airline for flight status,” Biven said.
Video shows ‘how violent this crash is’: Louisville plane crash aftermath footage shows plume of smoke rise over scene
Local hospitals received 10 patients
UofL Health, an academic health system based in Louisville, told the Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, that it received 10 patients related to the plane incident.
Two people were at the UofL Hospital Burn Center in critical condition, and two others were being treated with non-life-threatening injuries. Six others were being treated with non-life-threatening injuries at Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, South Hospital, and Jewish Hospital.
Shelter-in-place order issued in areas north of the airport
Following the crash, a shelter-in-place order was issued stretching from the area around the airport northward to the Ohio River, including Old Louisville, South Louisville, and downtown Louisville.
Areas south of the Outer Loop were cleared from the order at around 7:15 p.m. By 9 p.m., the order was reduced to a one-mile radius of the Louisville airport.
Louisville’s Emergency Management Agency said crews were monitoring the air quality. The public was urged to avoid the area due to the smoke.
Local health authorities advised people with homes or businesses in the shelter-in-place area to “please turn off any air intake systems as soon as possible.”
UPS Worldport halts operations
UPS said in a statement that it was halting operations Tuesday night at Worldport. The Next Day Air sort was also canceled, and employees were told not to report to work, according to the company.
“We are terribly saddened by the accident tonight in Louisville,” the company said. “Our heartfelt thoughts are with everyone involved. UPS is committed to the safety of our employees, our customers, and the communities we serve. This is particularly true in Louisville, home to our airline and thousands of UPSers.”
UPS said it was working with the NTSB and was in close contact with the FAA. “We will work tirelessly with state and local authorities on response efforts,” according to the statement.
Kentucky’s largest public school system cancels classes
Kentucky’s largest school system canceled classes on Wednesday in response to the crash and fire. Jefferson County Public Schools, which serves roughly 93,000 students and has more than 17,000 employees, said students are not expected to do instructional work remotely, and employees are not expected to report to work.
“Due to the necessary shelter-in-place order issued by the city following this evening’s tragic plane crash, all JCPS schools will be closed … Nov. 5,” JCPS spokeswoman Carolyn Callahan said in a statement. “This will operate like a snow day, with no online instruction.”
All extracurricular activities are also canceled, Callahan said, and district officials will check the air and water quality of all schools near the crash site.
— Krista Johnson, Courier Journal
UPS: 3 crew members were onboard the aircraft
UPS confirmed that one of its aircraft was involved in an accident in Louisville. Three crew members were onboard the aircraft — a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 airplane — at the time of the incident, the company said in a statement.
“At this time, we have not confirmed any injuries/casualties,” UPS added in the statement.
FlightRadar24 said the plane had flown from Louisville to Baltimore earlier on Tuesday before returning to Louisville. The flight from Louisville to Honolulu typically takes 8 1/2 hours, according to the flight-tracking service.
The MD-11 has three engines — one mounted under each wing and one mounted under its tail. The jet, first launched in 1990, hasn’t carried a passenger flight since 2014. It remains active as a cargo plane.
In February 2023, the president of UPS told supply chain industry publication Freight Waves that the MD-11 was being phased out in favor of newer Boeing planes.
‘You could feel the heat off it’
Damon Fortner, 58, a long-haul UPS truck driver, told USA TODAY he was driving near the airport to pick up a load of packages when he saw the plane fly over a nearby road. “That’s awful low,” he said.
Seconds later, it exploded, barely 100 yards from where he stopped his pickup. He watched the plane take down telephone poles and power lines as it left a trail of fire.
“It blew up. And it just kept on. All you could hear was stuff blowing up, and black smoke everywhere,” he said. “You could feel the heat off it.”
Just after 7 p.m., Fortner and a coworker, wearing brown UPS uniforms, were standing by their pickups farther away, waiting for word from their bosses. They had been supposed to drive a truck to Boston overnight. Now, everything was grounded. As he waited, Fortner pulled up his phone, showing photos he snapped of black smoke filling the sky near his truck just hours earlier.
“I’ve never in my life seen anything like it,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t ever want to see anything like it.”
All he could think about were the poor souls who were on the plane, he said. “It tears me up.”
— Chris Kenning, USA TODAY
Deadly UPS plane crash: How often do cargo jets go down?
Massive smoke seen miles away
Traffic cameras and footage from local television stations showed a large plume of smoke and a red-orange glow of flames from fires ignited on the ground by the crash.
Smoke from the explosion drifted northwest from the airport, according to a radar image broadcast by local TV news. At a Kroger about nine miles from the airport, shoppers gasped as they watched the fire on a wall-mounted TV. Some said they’d seen the massive smoke cloud approach the area as the sun was setting.
Commercial airline passengers and retail employees inside the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport sheltered in place Tuesday evening while the airfield remained closed in the wake of the UPS cargo plane crash.
— Chris Kenning, USA TODAY; Courier Journal
Crash eyewitness: ‘You’d think the world was ending’
University of Louisville nursing student SJ Matthews, 21, was inside a restaurant near the airport when the crash occurred.
“We were getting food, we walked outside, and we just saw a big cloud of dust. You’d think the world was ending,” Matthews told the Courier Journal, while he waited to find out when he could head home to North Carolina. “I was just shocked, and then I find out a plane crashed and blew up, then my heart ached for the people in the plane.”
Danielle Seba, who works in customer service for a company that manages several souvenir shops inside the airport, said her husband was set to work a night shift at the UPS Worldport when they heard about the crash.
“He has to check to see if he is able to go to work tonight,” Seba said. “He was scheduled to go in at 9:30 p.m.”
Seba is waiting out the shelter-in-place order at the Churchill Downs retail store near the entrance to the airport’s security checkpoint.
“For a little while, they shut down TSA and had the gate pulled down. They had people piled up here in front of the rotunda area waiting,” Seba said. “We have coworkers working on the other side (of the checkpoint). They were showing us on their end what was going on.”
— Leo Bertucci, Courier Journal
‘You’d think the world was ending’: Witnesses horrified to see fiery UPS plane crash
How common are cargo plane crashes?
Of six fatal accidents involving commercial airliners around the globe in 2017, four were cargo planes and accounted for 12 of 19 on-board deaths that year, according to data analyzed by the International Air Transport Association.
From 2013 to 2017, data showed that 75 cargo accidents led to 119 fatalities, the agency said. The data showed that cargo operations were “in need of additional attention” to improve safety, according to the agency’s senior vice president for safety and flight operations, Gilberto Lopez Meyer.
Among the notable fatal cargo plane crashes in recent years in the United States are a February 2019 crash in Trinity Bay, Texas, involving an Atlas Air flight operating on behalf of Amazon Prime Air, killing all three crew members on board.
In August 2004, an Air Tahoma flight crashed during landing at the Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky International Airport, about 100 miles northeast of Louisville. The crash killed a first officer while the pilot survived.
— Amanda Lee Myers and Michael Loria, USA TODAY; Olivia Evans and Matthew Glowicki, Courier Journal
Louisville is a United Parcel Service hub
Louisville is a critical city for UPS. It’s home to UPS Worldport, an international air hub that’s the “largest fully automated package-handling facility in the world,” according to the company.
UPS Worldport is 5.2 million square feet, serves more than 300 daily inbound and outbound flights, and processes about two million packages every day, the company said.
The crash will likely disrupt deliveries for UPS, and its major customers, including Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service.
— Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY
Businesses near the crash sheltered in place, evacuated
The area of the crash is largely an industrial zone. Businesses in the area include Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant, UPS Flight Training Center, and UPS Worldport Freight Facility, among others. Many of those were open with employees on site at the time of the crash.
The majority of UPS’s thousands of hourly employees at UPS Worldport are members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union. A spokesperson for Teamsters Local 89, the local union that represents the Louisville-based workers, told the Courier Journal that “to the best of our knowledge, none of our members were anywhere near” the plane.
The spokesperson said workers still at UPS Worldport are sheltering in place, largely due to health concerns related to the smoke, and the power is off at UPS Worldport. “Aside from the smoke, we don’t believe any of our members are in any immediate danger,” the spokesperson added.
Ford Louisville Assembly Plant has started evacuating, said UAW Local 862 president Todd Dunn. He said the evacuation is a safety precaution, not because of immediate danger.
“We’re getting everybody out now,” Dunn said.
How many times has a UPS plane crashed before?
UPS Airlines has had two fatal plane crashes in its company history. Other minor, non-fatal crashes have resulted in substantial damage to planes.
In September 2010, a UPS Boeing 747-400F caught fire in flight. The plane crashed near Dubai, killing both crew members on board. This was the shipping and logistics company’s first fatal crash.
In August 2013, a plane that departed from the Louisville airport crashed near its final destination of Birmingham, Alabama.
The plane was an Airbus A300-600F and descended to an unsafe altitude, ultimately crashing and killing both crew members aboard. Pilot fatigue and plane instability were found to be factors in the crash after a federal investigation.
USA TODAY
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