By Drew FitzGerald and Esther Fung
Inconsistent communications among Boeing, airlines and regulators created blind spots about potential problems with a key part involved in the fatal crash of a United Parcel Service cargo jet in November, according to documents released Tuesday.
The files, released at the start of a two-day National Transportation Safety Board hearing on the disaster, showed that maintenance crews and UPS Airlines leaders had a patchy understanding of potential hazards from damage to metal bearing assemblies inside the MD-11 jet. The parts housing the bearings helped hold the jet's underwing engines in place.
"Had we known more, we could have done more with this," Shannon Deckard, director of quality assurance and chief inspector at UPS Airlines said in the hearing.
Spotty documentation might have also given regulators an incomplete picture of the jet's potential hazards. Between 2002 and 2022, only four of 10 instances of damage in the bearing's housing found by the NTSB were written up through Federal Aviation Administration service difficulty reports, NTSB officials noted. Most of the issues were reported to Boeing.
Authorities ordered all MD-11s grounded in November after a Honolulu-bound UPS jet crashed just after takeoff from its Louisville, Ky., cargo hub. Images from the scene showed the 34-year-old plane's left engine tore from the wing during takeoff, causing pilots to lose control of the aircraft. The crash killed three crew members and 12 people on the ground, including one who succumbed to injuries weeks later.
A NTSB report in November said investigators found signs of " fatigue cracks in addition to areas of overstress failure" in the structure that connected the crashed MD-11's left engine to its wing.
Boeing, owing to its past takeover of MD-11 maker McDonnell Douglas, plays a major role in tracking how its aircraft handle wear and tear and informing customers how to maintain them. UPS and its contractors are responsible for performing shop work to keep the planes airworthy. They could also flag anomalies or defects with Boeing. The FAA can also step in to order maintenance or to ground planes if regulators find a hazardous condition isn't being addressed.
A 2011 Boeing service letter described past failures in the bearing assembly, but didn't find that the faults posed a safety of flight problem. An FAA official speaking at the hearing said there was a misunderstanding in earlier years about the severity of a potential failure around the bearing and its effect on related components.
UPS said it received no more communications from Boeing about the MD-11 bearing issue from 2011 until last year's crash. Post-accident inspections later found three more UPS MD-11s with bearing parts out of place.
"UPS continues to cooperate fully with the investigation and is participating as requested by the Board. The questions and comments shared during the hearing do not reflect the NTSB's findings or conclusions," said a UPS spokeswoman. "The NTSB has not determined a cause for the accident. Our focus remains on supporting the investigation and honoring those affected by this tragedy."
The FAA said in a statement that it values the NTSB's expertise and has worked with investigators throughout the probe.
Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com and Esther Fung at esther.fung@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 19, 2026 18:06 ET (22:06 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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