A Kentucky family has filed one of the first wrongful death lawsuits tied to last month’s fatal UPS Airlines crash in Louisville, alleging that unsafe maintenance work performed in San Antonio contributed to the midair structural failure that killed 14 people and injured dozens more.
In a 29-page complaint filed Dec. 3 in Jefferson County Circuit Court, the family of Trinadette R. Chavez, a 37-year-old mother of two who was killed when the aircraft slammed into the ground in an industrial area near the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, accuses UPS as well as its airline subsidiary, The Boeing Co., engine designer and manufacturer General Electric and maintenance firm VT San Antonio Aerospace, Inc. of negligence leading up to the crash.
The suit states that VT San Antonio Aerospace which operates a large repair facility near San Antonio International Airport — performed major structural work on the aircraft just weeks before the fatal crash. According to the complaint, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11F freight aircraft underwent extensive maintenance at the company’s facility in San Antonio from Sept. 3 to Oct. 18, including repairs to a cracked center wing fuel tank, corrosion removal from structural components and a required lubrication of the engine pylon’s thrust links and spherical bearings. The last maintenance task was completed by the company on Oct. 18, the filing states.
Flight data and debris analysis cited in the lawsuit —drawn from early National Transportation Safety Board investigations — indicated that the left engine and its entire pylon assembly separated from the wing shortly after the aircraft began its takeoff roll on Nov. 4. The complaint alleges that fatigue cracks in the pylon’s aft mount — parts designed to hold the engine to the wing — had been present before departure and went undetected by VT San Antonio Aerospace during its recent work.
The filing indicates the left engine was later found intact beside the runway, while the aircraft plunged into nearby warehouses and a petroleum recycling facility, igniting more than 38,000 gallons of jet fuel in a fire the filing states “took more than 30 hours to bring under control.”
The suit accuses UPS of operating the 34-year-old MD-11F “when it was not in an airworthy condition,” and alleges that both UPS and UPS Airlines ignored or failed to identify defects affecting the left wing and engine mount area. Boeing — the successor to McDonnell Douglas, which designed the MD-11 series — is accused of failing to adequately warn operators about risks of catastrophic pylon-mount failure despite previous MD-11 incidents. GE, which manufactured the aircraft’s CF6 engines, is also named as a defendant.
Chavez’s youngest son, identified in the suit as F.R., is the plaintiff. The lawsuit seeks damages under Kentucky law for loss of parental consortium and states that additional wrongful death claims will be added once the estate is formally opened. The family of another person killed in the crash filed a second, similar lawsuit the same day.
The San Antonio Report requested statements from UPS, Boeing, and ST Engineering, the parent company of VT San Antonio Aerospace but did not receive responses before publication.
This is a developing story. Updates will be provided as they become available.