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UPS Cargo Plane Crash at Louisville Airport Sparks Massive Fire
Police announced a shelter-in-place order for "all areas north of the airport to the Ohio River."
Nov 04, 2025
This is a developing story… Please check back for updates…
Aerial footage showed plumes of black smoke and flames around the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky after a UPS plane crashed during its departure on Tuesday evening.
The Federal Aviation Administration said on social media that UPS Flight 2976—a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 bound for Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, Hawaii—crashed around 5:15 pm local time. The agency added that the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with the NTSB providing all updates.
The Louisville Metro Police Department confirmed that the LMPD and multiple other agencies were responding to the scene, where there are "injuries reported."
LMPD initially announced a shelter-in-place order "for all locations within five miles of the airport," which was then expanded to "all areas north of the airport to the Ohio River."
The airport—which confirmed that "the airfield is closed" after the crash—is the UPS global hub. The shipping giant said in a statement that there were three crewmembers onboard and "at this time, we have not confirmed any injuries/casualties."
"UPS will release more facts as they become available, but the National Transportation Safety Board is in charge of the investigation and will be the primary source of information about the official investigation," the company added.
As CNN reported Tuesday:
The McDonnell Douglas MD-11F is a freight transport aircraft manufactured originally by McDonnell Douglas and later by Boeing. The aircraft is primarily flown by FedEx Express, Lufthansa Cargo, and UPS Airlines for cargo.
The plane also served as a popular wide-bodied passenger airplane after it was first flown in 1990. The aircraft involved in Tuesday's crash was built in 1991.
As fuel costs increased for the three engine jets many of them were converted to freighters. The plane can take off weighing in at a maximum 633,000 pounds and carrying more than 38,000 gallons of fuel, according to Boeing, which bought McDonnell Douglass.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said that it "is monitoring this developing tragic event on the ground," and "as this horrific scene is being investigated, prayers on behalf of our entire international union are with those killed, injured, and affected, including their families, co-workers, and loved ones."
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said that he and his wife, Rachel, "are praying for victims of the UPS plane that crashed."
"We have every emergency agency responding to the scene," the Democrat added. "There are multiple injuries and the fire is still burning. There are many road closures in the area—please avoid the scene."
Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is headed to Louisville for a briefing with the mayor, said, "Please pray for the pilots, crew, and everyone affected."
Republican President Donald Trump's transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, similarly said, "Please join me in prayer for the Louisville community and flight crew impacted by this horrific crash."
During a press conference earlier on Tuesday, Duffy had warned of "mass chaos" if the ongoing government shutdown continues, saying: "You will see mass flight delays. You'll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don't have the air traffic controllers."
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Blaming Trump Tariffs Alone for 20,000 Laid Off UPS Workers Hides Key Factor: Stock Buybacks and Wall Street Greed
Blaming the Trump tariffs for every sin imaginable may be emotionally satisfying, but while it may end up being a factor, it is not the whole story here.
May 01, 2025
It’s such a tempting storyline: UPS announces that it will lay off 20,000 workers, citing “changes in the global trade policy and new or increased tariffs.”
There you have it. A perfect example of how Trump’s tariffs are screwing working people, many of whom voted for him.
Or is it?
UPS, like every major U.S. corporation, is in business to extract as much wealth as possible and shovel it to its shareholders and top executives in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. And like every major corporation, UPS will pay for that wealth extraction by laying off as many workers as possible. That may reduce the production of goods and services, but so be it, if it generates more money for shareholders and executives. In big business today, wealth extraction always comes first.
This is not a company struggling to make ends meet.
Let’s look at some of UPS’s numbers. In 2023, the company authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, starting in 2024 with $500 million and another $5.5 billion in dividends. In 2025, UPS plans to spend another $1 billion on stock buybacks, as well as $5.5 billion more in dividends. In 2024, not incidentally, UPS posted $8.5 billion in profits. This is not a company struggling to make ends meet.
(Stock buybacks are when a corporation uses its own funds to repurchase shares and thereby raise the price of those shares, which greatly pleases its largest shareholders. Before deregulation in 1982, a company buying its own shares was considered illegal stock manipulation.)
To maintain this wealth pump for its investors and top officers, who are primarily compensated with stock incentives, cash needs to be generated and replenished. The simplest way to do that without acquiring more debt is to lay off workers.
Before the deregulation of Wall Street that came with the Reagan and Clinton administrations, no corporate manager would dare to lay off workers during profitable periods. To do so was a sign of poor management, a blemish on the CEO and his/her team. Workers and their communities were considered corporate stakeholders, right along with shareholders.
But after deregulation, the only stakeholder that mattered was the shareholder. The hell with workers and their communities. Companies began moving corporate headquarters to the sites of the highest governmental bidders, and in short order layoffs during good times became a symbol of smart management. Greed is good reigned supreme. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers for the gory details.)
Do not lend any credibility to corporate PR announcements. Their job is to do all they can to obscure how much they are shoveling to Wall Street.
The Teamsters union, which represents 300,000 UPS hourly workers, will fight these recently announced layoffs. Sean O’Brian, who spoke at the Republican national convention in 2024, sees any Teamsters layoffs as a violation of the contract:
United Parcel Service is contractually obligated to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs under our current national master agreement. If UPS wants to continue to downsize corporate management, the Teamsters won’t stand in its way. But if the company intends to violate our contract or makes any attempt to go after hard-fought, good-paying Teamsters jobs, UPS will be in for a hell of a fight.
We can be sure that the Teamsters will be looking closely at UPS’s finances, especially the large amounts going to stock buybacks and dividends. They will not sacrifice their members’ jobs on the altar of obscene wealth extraction.
Will the Trump tariffs have a major impact on UPS jobs?
We just don’t know that yet. But one thing we know for sure: Do not lend any credibility to corporate PR announcements. Their job is to do all they can to obscure how much they are shoveling to Wall Street. Their credo: The extent and consequences of the wealth extraction machine must never be revealed.
Blaming the Trump tariffs for every sin imaginable may be emotionally satisfying. But letting larger corporations and their Wall Street handlers off the hook when it comes to job destruction, which the Democrats have done for more than a generation, is in large part why we have Trump in the first place.
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A Hot Labor Summer, Literally
As heat records continue to be broken, the dangers are overwhelmingly borne by workers whose jobs directly expose them to heat, like farmworkers, construction workers, landscapers, and maintenance workers.
Aug 24, 2023
This summer has been a hot one for labor as strikes and other worker actions have swept the country. At the same time, workers have been toiling in one of the hottest summers ever recorded due to the ongoing climate emergency. This has put millions at greater risk of heat-related illness and death.
The 340,000 UPS workers, represented by the Teamsters union, made excessive heat in the workplace a top priority in their recent contract negotiations with the company. Between 2015 and 2022, at least 143 UPS employees had been hospitalized for heat injuries, according to company records obtained by The Washington Post.
To protect their health, workers demanded that UPS provide air conditioning in their signature delivery trucks. For the first time, the company agreed to equip them in all new delivery vehicles. But it’s outrageous that UPS workers had to bargain over the basic human right to a safe workplace while their CEO took home $19 million last year.
No federal laws currently impose heat safety standards for workplaces.
Federal and state governments, meanwhile, have largely taken a hands-off approach to protecting workers facing such dangerous conditions.
In the midst of an unprecedented heatwave, Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed a bill that will rescind mandatory rest and water breaks for construction workers. “It’s inhumane and cruel,” remarked Eva Marroquin, who cleans up construction sites in the Austin area.
Abbott’s egregious move grabbed national headlines, but it’s not just Texas workers who are vulnerable.
Regulations protecting outdoor workers from heat have only been implemented in a handful of states, including California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. Indoor workers, such as those employed at warehouses without air conditioning systems, also lack heat safety regulations in most states.
No federal laws currently impose heat safety standards for workplaces. In 2021, President Joe Biden ordered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to produce heat safety standards, but the agency still hasn’t issued them.
Anticipating that workers would face life-or-death summer heat, attorneys general from seven states petitioned OSHA to issue an emergency temporary order earlier this year that would require employers to provide water, rest breaks, and shade when temperatures top 80°F. The agency refused.
As heat records continue to be broken, the dangers are overwhelmingly borne by workers whose jobs directly expose them to heat, like farmworkers, construction workers, landscapers, and maintenance workers, among others. These jobs are predominantly low-income and more often held by people of color.
In San Antonio, a 24-year-old construction worker, Gabriel Infante, died this July from severe heat stroke. A 29-year-old farmworker in South Florida, Efraín López García, died that same month after experiencing symptoms consistent with heat illness. Extreme heat killed another young farmworker in Florida earlier this year after his employer failed to provide water breaks and shade.
Sadly, these and many more worker deaths across the U.S. could have been avoided.
President Biden has taken small steps to address this health threat. His Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su issued the first heat hazard alert reminding employers of their responsibility “not to assign work in high heat conditions without protections in place for workers.”
But for workers and their families, an “alert” is no replacement for a nationwide, legally enforceable heat standard that must be issued as quickly as possible. Absent an OSHA standard, Congress and states can still act to protect workers.
Workers’ lives are on the line. Until they are safe on the job, there will be many more “hot labor summers” in the forecast.
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