UPS Airlines Flight 61
United Parcel Service McDonnell Douglas MD-11 · Runway excursion and adverse weather conditions
From Incheon International Airport (ICN) to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16RA175
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 4
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 4
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
McDonnell Douglas MD-11
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-11
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N277UP
- Operator
- United Parcel Service
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Route
- From Incheon International Airport (ICN)To Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Unknown or undetermined
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Organizational issues › Development
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
UPS Airlines Flight 61 was operated by a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 modified to carry cargo from Seoul Airport to Anchorage Airport; the flight ran off the runway while attempting to take off.
Accident
UPS Flight 61, The flight, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11F cargo aircraft, was bound for Anchorage, Alaska. The flight was carrying 629,600 lb of cargo, which was below the maximum permitted takeoff weight of 630,500 lb.
Flight 61 was cleared for takeoff on runway 33L, The aircraft reached the safe takeoff speed V1; after reaching V1, the crew heard an explosion, coming from tyre no. 9 (the left tyre of the centre landing gear). Then the aircraft leaned to the left when tyre no. 10 of the same landing gear also burst.
The aircraft began to lean and the wing would scrape runway 33L, The strong vibration forces and then caused the breakage of the lower drag brace of the centre landing gear.
The drag brace suffered serious damage, This caused a rupture of the brake 1 hydraulic system, which reduced the efficiency of the brakes by 48%.
The crew realises the situation and they make the nose of the flight pitch down; after doing so they abort the takeoff with 4,635 feet of runway remaining, the aircraft began to decelerate. But the pilots realise that they will not manage to stop before overrunning the end of the runway, Flight 61 required a distance of 5,550 feet to be able to decelerate from the position at which the takeoff was aborted.
Finally the brakes break and the nose landing gear collapses and the nose of the MD-11 scrapes along the runway, the flight overruns the end of the runway, the flight finally comes to a stop approximately 485 metres from the end of runway 33L, but it broke the Guidance Antennas for other aircraft; these were repaired 3 months after the Incident.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
ARAIB investigators arrived at Seoul International Airport and found a difficulty in determining the flight performance of an aircraft after V1 when the available information and the crew have little time to make a decision whether or not to continue the takeoff during an emergency situation.
The UPS Airlines flight operations manual establishes a rule that after V1, rejecting the takeoff of its flights is not recommended unless the captain notices strange behaviour in the aircraft or in the weather performance, this makes the aircraft unable to fly correctly, but the manual does not establish a definition of "In the event of strange behaviour it is not recommended to fly, nor to continue the takeoff after exceeding V1".
ARAIB investigators point out that it would be beneficial for the aviation industry to provide flight crews with definitions of "In the event of strange behaviour it is not recommended to fly, nor to continue the takeoff after exceeding V1" and additional guidance and training on how to fly in the event of abnormal behaviour in the weather, and training in flight performance on UPS aircraft in certain circumstances was suggested, especially after exceeding a V1.
Cause
The ARAIB investigators concluded that after the high-speed takeoff cancellation occurred, the centre landing gear tyre and the drag brace defect, and it separates from the runway, were caused by the strong pressures of the G-forces.
The contributing factor is:
1. Limited time and deficiency of the information available in the UPS Airlines flight manual about the situation encountered.
2. Possible metal fatigue in the drag brace of the centre landing gear after the tyre explosion.
3. Reduction and failures in braking performance due to the rupture of the hydraulic line of brake system 1, and the wet runway contributed to the aircraft not stopping before the takeoff runway.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Spanish Wikipedia article “Vuelo 61 de UPS Airlines” (revision 160438848, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
Spanish Wikipedia article: Vuelo 61 de UPS Airlines
- Article
- Vuelo 61 de UPS Airlines
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 160438848 · 2024-05-30 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q116431874
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA16RA175
- Event ID
- 20160606X22549
- Case number
- DCA16RA175
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- es Wikipedia article "Vuelo 61 de UPS Airlines" (page 10452918, revision 160438848), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DCA16RA175 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA16RA175
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA16RA175: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA16RA175
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "UPS Airlines Flight 61" and NTSB case DCA16RA175, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.