SAN ANTONIO – For Jeff Coats, the Tuesday crash of UPS Airlines Flight 2976 is personal.
Coats retired last year as chief inspector of ST Engineering’s San Antonio maintenance operation.
The company performed maintenance on the plane from Sept. 3 to Oct. 18, according to flight logs uncovered shortly after the MD-11 went down shortly after taking off in Louisville, Kentucky.
Coats told KSAT on Friday that he worked exclusively on MD-11’s the final decade of his career and had even worked on the plane that crashed.
At least 13 people died, including all three UPS crewmembers.
The death toll on the ground remained at 10, as of Friday afternoon, but is expected to rise in the coming days as investigators scour a half-mile debris field near Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.
“Nobody knows what happened, including me.”
Coats, whose sofa-side table includes multiple models of MD-11’s in the UPS paint scheme, described the airliner as a “workhorse” that carried passengers until 2014 and has remained a popular cargo hauler.
He told KSAT that he has watched with horror, like much of America, as more footage of Tuesday’s crash emerges.
Coats, however, said media reports describing the recent San Antonio maintenance as major fuel tank repairs are inaccurate, and that it is much too soon to pinpoint what occurred or to blame the crash on poor maintenance.
“That is not correct. It was in San Antonio for a scheduled maintenance visit. And then they see a motor on fire on a left wing and everybody assumes that’s the problem. And with my experience, that is for sure not the problem,” said Coats.
He added that MD-11’s are not known for “uncontained engine failures,” a term he used to describe what happened Tuesday evening, and said he would not speculate on the root cause of the incident because he is not a federal crash investigator.
“Nobody knows what happened, including me,” said Coats, who asked the public to allow the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to conduct a thorough investigation before jumping to conclusions.
That investigation could take a year or longer.
ST Engineering confirms it handles airframe maintenance for UPS MD-11’s
ST Engineering, a Singapore-based engineering and aerospace company, has multiple maintenance hangars at San Antonio International Airport.
A spokesperson for the company this week described UPS as a customer and stated ST Engineering performs airframe maintenance for its MD-11’s.
“We are saddened by the unfortunate accident of the UPS aircraft. Our thoughts are with those who have been impacted especially the bereaved families. We are not able to comment further at this point in time as investigations are ongoing. We will cooperate fully when the relevant authorities reach out to us,” the email statement reads.
“The checks are always the same. The guys here are good because they do the same job every time,” said Coats.
UPS officials on Wednesday identified the three crewmembers killed in the crash as: Captain Richard Wartenberg, First Officer Lee Truitt and International Relief Officer Captain Dana Diamond.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.