UPS names pilots killed in Louisville plane crash
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect an additional fatality announced Thursday evening.
Two days after UPS Flight 2976 crashed while taking off from Louisville, Kentucky, the company released the names of the three pilots on board who died.
Captain Richard Wartenberg, First Officer Lee Truitt, and International Relief Officer Captain Dana Diamond were operating the flight, UPS announced. They are among 13 who died in the crash; the other people were on the ground.
“We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of our colleagues, and to the loved ones of those in the Louisville community,” said UPS executive vice president Nando Cesarone in a written statement.
There are more than 30 National Transportation Safety Board employees working on the investigation, board member Todd Inman told reporters Thursday. The agency managed to fly the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder overnight to its lab in D.C. and successfully extract important data from both, he said.
Brian Gaudet, director of public affairs for the pilots’ union, the Independent Pilots Association, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the accident “hits really hard, because it was in Louisville proper,” where UPS has its largest air hub known as Worldport.
The NTSB has named IPA and others as official parties to its investigation, including the Teamsters union, which represents UPS’ mechanics, UPS, the FAA, GE and Boeing Corporation.
“At the time that the accident occurred on Tuesday, it was a very active ramp and a very active runway,” Gaudet said.
“We had guys that were in pre-flight plans, guys that were in planes doing final checks, runway, crews that were on the runway, waiting to take off. And then all of a sudden you have this massive accident and fireball that continued off of the runway and unfortunately into the community.”
While operations were halted at Louisville temporarily, pilots elsewhere continued to fly, he said. About half UPS’ 3,300 pilots are based out of Louisville, which is UPS Airlines’ headquarters.
“I can guarantee we’re going to learn something from this,” Gaudet said of the Louisville crash.
“If there’s something that comes out of this that requires pushing on the administration or pushing on Congress to try to get changes because of what we learned from this, that will happen.”
Multiple reports have noted the plane was recently in San Antonio for about six weeks of maintenance.
Inman told reporters they are “currently downloading that information” and will go back even further into all of the plane’s maintenance records. “We will look at every piece of maintenance that was done,” he said.
He said UPS has told the agency no maintenance was done on the plane immediately before the fateful Tuesday flight that would have caused a delay.
At this point, he said, the NTSB has found nothing about the aircraft, an MD-11, to suggest an urgent threat to the flying public.
The job of a cargo pilot is quite different from that of a passenger airline pilot, Gaudet said.
“Our pilots say they fly on the backside of the clock into the dark side of the airport. They pull up to a ramp that’s basically a warehouse, and that’s how they enter their work, and that’s how they exit their work,” he said.
Depending on how remote their location is, he said, they have to wait around in more industrial parts of airports for a transport to a hotel.
“It’s a lonelier job,” he said.
About the Author
As a business reporter, Emma Hurt leads coverage of the Atlanta airport, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Norfolk Southern and other travel and logistics companies. Prior to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she worked as an editor and Atlanta reporter for Axios, a politics reporter for WABE News and a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
