The crash of the UPS MD-11 when one of the engines separated at rotation resulted in a grounding of the entire fleet of DC-10s and MD-11s. The process for returning the fleets to service continues as I write this, but I recently heard that UPS has decided that they won’t bother to return their fleet and will accelerate a retirement process that was already being planned.

Since Boeing Field was somewhere I got to spend a lot of time and was a location that got regular visits from UPS MD-11s, I got to see them on a regular basis. I left before they did but now no one there will get to see this beefy jet in UPS colours again. Here are some of the shots I have got of them over the years. I do hope that other operators will still have a need for their examples and this won’t be the end of the road for this type.