Law&Crime Sidebar - 12 Dead in Fiery UPS Plane Crash — Everything We Know

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Shocking new details are emerging after a UPS cargo plane crash in Louisville, Kentucky killed at least 12 people. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber and former FBI & CIA agent Tracy Walder delve into the investigation, including mechanical failure, pilot error, and potential sabotage. Discover the latest information, the recovery of the plane's black box, and how officials are organizing the massive debris field.https://secure.kentucky.gov/formservices/Finance/emergencyreliefhttps://www.gofundme.com/c/act/kentucky-plane-crash-reliefPLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Grow your own audience today – go to https://www.opus.pro/sidebar for 1 week free plus 50% off the 3 months of Opus Pro. HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wonderry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The impact and intensity of the wreckage, of the charred wreckage, is unlike anything I've ever seen before and certainly nothing that I ever want to see again. We have shocking details about a large UPS cargo plane that crashed during. takeoff from an airport in Louisville, Kentucky. We are getting our first investigative clues as to what may have happened to cause the jet to crash and explode, killing at least 12 people, including a child. We're going to take a closer look at the latest information and what happens next with former CIA and FBI agent Tracy Walder, who was at the Muhammad Ali airport in Louisville

that day. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. By the way, if you're a supporter of what we do here at Long Crime at Sidebar, have you ever wondered how we're able to share so many clips from the biggest cases so quickly? Here's a secret. It's called Opus Clip. This is an all-in-one AI editor that makes it a breeze to cut, create, and upload videos across any platform. Through AI, Opus Clip generates B-roll. It reframes footage, and it even cleans up audio. It is so easy. You just visit opus.pro slash sidebar. You sign up, you upload, and in minutes you will have tons of perfectly edited clips ready to go for TikTok.

shorts, reels, opus clip is your one-stop shop. Having a tool like Opusclip means our producers can get you viral courtroom updates instantly. And at Sidebar, we want our listeners and viewers to share their ideas too. And this is the most powerful tool there is to help you edit like a pro. So go to Opus.combeau slash Sidebar to create your videos today. Okay, we're doing something a little bit different than we usually do on Sidebar. This is not the typical story that we cover. Then again, this is not the typical story itself.

This is such a tragedy. We're talking about what we know so far about the UPS plane crash in Kentucky. And you've likely seen the shocking videos of this. This jet trying to gain altitude, but instead crashes just outside the airport fence. It is horrible. The plane that was full of fuel for its planned trip to Honolulu, Hawaii, exploded. It exploded into flames, and it took hours to extinguish. There was this massive cloud of smoke that could be seen for miles.

fire officials told local outlet WLKY that it could take a week or longer to put out any hot spots. And we now know that at least 12 people have died. And first responders have switched this from a rescue mission to one of recovery. So the question now is what happened, what could have turned, what is simply an everyday transport flight into just this awful, awful scene that stretches more than half a mile. Was it mechanical failure? Was it pilot error? Was it sabotage? We're going to talk about it. But first, you should know that this global shipping company, UPS, it doesn't just have the iconic brown trucks that are spread out across the United States. They have a fleet of cargo planes that transport hundreds of thousands of packages every single day.

The company's aviation hub, UPS Worldport. It is located in Louisville, Kentucky, at the Muhammad Ali International Airport. And that is where this happened. That is where this tragedy struck on Tuesday. Here's the thing to take into consideration, too. According to reporting from the Associated Press, this crash was devastating, not only for the actual plane itself, but for the surrounding area. It caused a ripple effect in the industrial area on the other side of that airfield fence.

We're talking explosions at other businesses. Kentucky Petroleum Recycling, Grade A auto parts, which is a salvage yard. And then you had Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who issued a state of emergency in the aftermath of this crash, telling reporters that the child who died was with a parent at that auto parts business. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that happening there? It's just unbelievably sad. It is unbelievably tragic. Now, some people who had been on the ground, they were fortunate enough to go to the hospital.

They were discharged. They were released. But there are others who went into the hospital. and they are still in critical condition. And more than a dozen people are still unaccounted for. That's according to the governor. Now, three people were actually aboard the plane when it tried to lift off on Tuesday, again bound for Hawaii.

According to NTSB investigators, one of the three engines actually fell off the wing, that leading to just a catastrophic chain reaction. After being cleared for takeoff, a large plume of fire in the area of the left wing occurred during the take-off role. The plane lifted off and gained enough altitude to clear the fence at the end of runway 17R. Shortly after clearing that fence, it made impact with structures and the terrain off of the airport property.

A post-impact fire ensued, which covers approximately almost a half of a mile. And we have viewed airport CCTV security coverage, which shows the left engine detaching from the wing during the takeoff roll. This and other videos, along with evidence, we were finding our very valuable asset to our investigators and helping us hone further which areas we were going to be focusing on as we move into further days of the investigation. NTSB board member, Ton Edmund, told reporters on Wednesday that dozens of the agency's workers are now a part of this investigation, and he talked about the different groups being formed to focus on certain aspects of this. So, for example, one group is going to focus on what happened before the crash, right? Who were the people on board? What were they doing in the days leading up to this tragedy? What were the details of this particular flight? You have another group that's going to document the accident scene, try to calculate all the trajectories and angles that will be so important to figuring out,

what happened. And plus, there's a group to look at maintenance logs, possibly going back months. Now, importantly, first responders, they also recovered the plane's black box on Wednesday. That's huge. Our investigative teams we anticipate will be here at least a week, if not longer. Our mission, again, is not to understand not only what happened, but why it happened and recommend changes to prevent it from happening again. We will not be determining the probable cause while we are here on sync. nor will speculate about what may have caused this.

Since we're just beginning with the investigation, we don't have more factual information to give you at this time, but we believe over the next couple of days we'll be able to avail a little bit further for you. I do want to also mention this just happened in the last basically 30 minutes. We have identified the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. This is what is commonly referred to as a black box. We have investigators now that have located it, As you can imagine, it is, and it's suffered some heat, not intrusion, but heat around it.

These recorders are built for that. And just before we get the question, these reporters were updated from its original manufacturer. They are L3 Harris installed at two different dates. We're going back and verifying that, but we feel comfortable once we get these to our lab in D.C. that we will be able to get a good readout of the applicable data, and that will be yet another point of information that will really help us understand what happened during this point of flight. Governor Bashir, along with the city's mayor, they had a chance to visit this crash site. They said that this devastation is unbelievable. As governor, I've seen a lot. I've had to order

freezer trucks in a pandemic. I've walked the line. of an F4 tornado through my dad's hometown. I've seen towns hit by flooding we only describe as biblical and what this scene is is violent. Where the plane hit at best is destroyed. What you see are mangled remnants of what was in its path completely burnt. and blackened so to talk about this investigation what we may be seeing the lines of inquiry that officials have been handing hand handing down right now i want to bring in a former cia special operations officer and fbi special agent author of the unexpected spy a national security contributor on news nation frequent contributor here on sidebar tracy walder who by the way just

so happened to be at the Muhammad Ali International Airport on that day. Now, Tracy, it was before all of this happened, though, right? Actually, just before, to be completely honest with you, I think I have left about 45 minutes, the car, excuse me, had picked me up about 45 minutes prior to this happening. So I didn't miss it, I guess, by a whole lot. That's incredible. You know, look, I wanted your perspective for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is because officials during a news conference on Wednesday, they talked about the FBI sending an agents to help at the crash site. Have you ever been part of investigation like this? And what could the FBI provide? What resources could the FBI provide here? So I personally actually

have not been a part. Typically, when the FBI comes to an investigation like that, a lot of what they're going to bring in is our members of their evidence response team. And that is because they want to determine whether or not this is criminal. This is technically not just happening to the state of Kentucky. This is something that is occurring at an airport. Therefore, the FBI and all of their resources are typically used in something like this. It's not unusual. But they want to ensure that there wasn't any kind of act of sabotage, if you will, or any type of criminal event that occurred as a result of this. And what would they be looking for? What would be a clear sign of sabotage? Would it be something, you know, I mentioned before that there are groups

who are going to be looking into everything that happened before the crash, who was on board, maintenance logs? How, in your experience, have you seen, what is evidence of potential sabotage? So this is going to be actually very similar to what we saw in that Air India crash a few months ago, I believe, where there was just one survivor and that they're starting to think may have been an act of sabotage. One of the things that they're going to do that I think people forget about is they are going to be looking into the communications of the pilots and the crew prior to them actually getting onto that plane and getting the plane ready because they want to determine what was their mindset like was just a normal day and something catastrophic unfortunately happened

or was there something more were they communicating something so that's one thing they actually will be looking into rather than just the plane itself if you will also I believe the FBI really will be looking at these maintenance logs of the flight. I'm understanding just based on what they have said that there were no maintenance. There was no maintenance that was done to this plane. It didn't need any prior to it taking off. So they will be looking at that. Also, they're going to be looking at communications with ATC or the air traffic controller.

What did those look like? A lot of what the FBI will be focusing on is sort of, I guess, those digital forensics, if you will, because it's going to take quite some time to recreate the crash itself. And who had, like you said, who had access to the plane? Because an engine falling off the wing is such an outrageous thing to think about. And how does that happen? And if anybody had access to it in some way, the NTSB, the FAA, they are in charge of this investigation. This is a massive undertaking.

This is a massive scene. I talked about the ripple effects, how it hit two other businesses. generally speaking, when you have these different agencies and all of these different officials are part of this, how do they make sure there's the proper line of communication, that things stay organized, that nothing slips through the cracks? Is it a good thing to have so many eyes on this? Or can it be a challenge? So yes and no, right?

And I think that is the issue. A lot of times what they're going to do in a situation like this is set up almost a temporary office, if you will, probably out of the airport, where they are all physically. working together. That's actually a good thing because you want to keep these lines of communication open, like you said. So people aren't, you know, doubling efforts that don't need to necessarily be double. That's very inefficient or investigating the wrong thing or not talking to each other when they do find a piece of intelligence that's needed. So a lot of times they will kind of set up these temporary task force centers, if you will, they're mobile. And that's probably

what they are doing, although obviously I don't know for sure. They're probably operating out of the airport itself. And as they're collecting all of this potential evidence, the debris and materials and again, massive undertaking there, generally speaking, have you, would it strike you as odd if this was a deliberate act? If there was a crime here, if this was an act of sabotage, have you seen something like this before, you know, allegedly targeting a transport plane like this? I mean, would it make sense that this could potentially be a criminal act? Have you seen something like that before? Listen, Jesse, anything's possible.

Gosh, I do not recall how many years ago it was, but there was a flight actually in Europe where the pilot deliberately flew it into a mountain and killed everyone on board. And then also you have that Air India flight as well. So I don't want to say that this has never happened before. Obviously, it's rare. And as you pointed out, this was a plane that in my understanding, it didn't need any maintenance prior to it taking off. At least that's what the NTSB has said.

And so, yes, an engine just seemingly falling off as well as damage to the wing, I think, is catastrophic in nature. Also, we have to look at, you know, the fuel, in my opinion, played a huge role in the, I guess, essentially trail of fire that you see. This was a plane that was filled to the brim with fuel because this is a long-haul flight, right? And it's very similar if you saw, you know, the 9-11 hijackers. They wanted cross-country flights because they knew more fuel, creates more of an explosion. But again, that's all just hypothesizing, right?

This really just could have been an unfortunate connection of events. So I don't want to see I've never seen this before. But yes, it's definitely rare. And let me provide a little bit more areas of context here. So according to the NTSB at this point in time, they're saying the government shutdown had not affected the number of people in the air traffic control tower. Obviously, that is a question that's come up. You have a retired UPS captain, Norman C. Wright, Jr., told WLKY that the cargo plane, the one we're talking about, it was the third largest aircraft in the company's fleet.

It was one of the oldest. It was built in 1991. You also told the outlet that it was one of the most reliable planes they had. You know, Tracy, interesting, right? When you think about the plane's age, it's catching a lot of people's attention. How far back? back in the records, will investigators go in terms of maintenance log and previously documented issues? And we talk about how long this investigation can be. Does the FBI go through that as well? I mean, what can we expect there, given the age of the plane? So that's going to probably mostly be done by the NTSB. But I think that they are going to go all the way back to actually the assembly line of that airplane. So probably even pre-1991, I believe 1991, was.

was the air, was actually put into service. So that's the year it started flying. Obviously, the building started before that. I think they're going to go all the way back. I think they have to in an event like this. And yes, it is a massive plane. Again, it's going to Hawaii, right? With a maximum amount probably of cargo on board.

Listen, it is reliable, but reliable things break over time, right? This is a plane that has been in service for quite some time and didn't have, at least from my understanding, a massive history of maintenance. I know I think it was in San Antonio in September for maintenance. I could be wrong, but that was something that I had read as well. But no, I guess, huge history of any kinds of maintenance issues. But yes, they're going to go back to the assembly of that airplane. And you know, one of the most disturbing aspects of this is that officials, Tracy, they haven't released the identities of the victims yet. ABC News reports that the coroner is still trying to identify some of the remains because of the horrific

conditions of the bodies. I mean, that could be a challenge. I do wonder in these kinds of scenes. It's going to be a huge challenge. Obviously UPS would know who was obviously flying that plane, who was crewing that plane based on passenger manifests, right? But then you need to be sure that those people actually got on the plane because, you know, things happen, right? People sub in for other individuals and it happens. This isn't a passenger payload kind of plane, right? This is a cargo payload kind of plane. And those are sort of, I guess, viewed differently, if you will. But yes, as I mentioned before, the huge amount of fuel on this plane is absolutely going to make it very, very difficult to identify individuals who were on that plane as well as individuals

who were victims on the ground. But I will say, word of who's been impacted, it is starting to trickle out. For example, there's a go-fond me right now for a man named Matt. And according to the fundraiser organizer Fawn Armstrong, Matt was severely burned. When he was caught in the fireball, he survived. But according to Fawn, he has burns on 95% of his body. The fund has raised more than $44,000 so far. And, you know, based on prior crash investigations, it has been predicted here that this could be a year, Tracy, a year before we really have concrete answers from the NTSB, maybe, you know, the FBI sooner. I mean, why so long? Does that make sense to you? It does. And it's similar to when we look at just really a lot of cases. I think sometimes TV and pop culture plays a role in people wanting these immediate answers. But to do these things properly, it does take a great deal of time, particularly when you have essentially everything in its path that's really been incinerated because you have a massive arson investigation now. And that takes some time as well. And I feel awful for the victims. I think those are the ones that ultimately

suffer as a result of this, I guess, waiting game, if you will. But I think it's unfortunately very normal for an investigation like this to take place. And it's horrific that people were injured to that extent and that the loss of life. I think it's important to note there are a lot of warehouses that surround this airport. I mean, I saw them yesterday. This airport sort of doesn't exist in this bubble of just fields. And so it is pretty horrific, the trail of destruction that was left. Would we hear something from the FBI sooner? Would they come to the conclusion that there wasn't a criminal act and maybe make an announcement before the NTSB continues their investigation to find out what the mechanical cause might have been or other cause? Would we hear

from the FBI before a year? Yes, we should. Typically in something like that, yes. Now, will it be in a matter of days? I personally don't think so, although I understand that that's something that people want. It would be a matter of probably months where the FBI would make that a determination whether this is a criminal investigation or a mechanical investigation. Now, we are putting the GoFundMe up there as well. And a couple other links I want to just mention if you're interested in contributing and helping. So Governor Bashir previously established the Team Kentucky Emergency Relief Fund to help people during tragedies. He said Wednesday that money donated to the fund right now is going to go toward health.

helping people and businesses that were impacted by this crash. GoFundMe has also created a centralized hub for verified fundraisers that are connected to the plane crash. If you want to contribute there, I'm going to put all the links there. But really, I know there's a lot of families, a lot of businesses, a lot of people affected who are in need right now. It's a horrible situation. Tracy, I really appreciate you taking the time and explaining what we may expect in the months to come.

Just a really, really horrible situation. But thank you so much. Thank you, Jesse. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You follow me on X or Instagram. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll speak to you next time. series, ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.