Fire and smoke mark where a UPS cargo plane crashed near Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on Nov. 4, 2025 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Stephen Cohen | Getty Images
A UPS cargo plane crashed shortly after taking off from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky at around 5:15 p.m. local time Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
At least three people were killed and at least 11 were injured, some of them significantly, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a press conference. He said those numbers are preliminary and that he thinks they will grow.
UPS said in a statement that there were three crewmembers on the plane. It was unclear if the fatalities were from the plane or on the ground, and Beshear said the status of the crew was unknown. He added that there was an emergency response area set up for families.
The reason for the crash was not immediately known. The plane was a MD-11F, a type of freight transport aircraft made by aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas, which merged with Boeing in 1997. The plane had hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel on board to travel all the way to Honolulu, Louisville Fire Chief Brian O’Neill said in the press conference.
The Louisville Metro Police Department said on X that it was implementing a shelter-in-place order near the crash site. Several businesses near the area were affected, officials said.
There was no hazardous material on the plane that would create an environmental issue, but the place where it crashed “could create those types of situations,” Beshear said. He said a petroleum recycling business and an an auto parts business are in the area and called it an “all-hands on deck response.”
A plume of smoke wafts over airport property after reports of a plane crash at Louisville International Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Louisville, Ky.
Jon Cherry | AP
A large plume of black smoke was visible near the airport, and footage from local TV showed fire and debris in a large radius around the crash site.
The FAA said the plane was en route to Honolulu and that it and the National Transportation Safety Board would investigate the incident.
The airport was closed following the incident, and “all arriving and departing flights at SDF are temporarily suspended,” the airport said in a statement on X Tuesday evening.
The airport is home to the UPS Worldport, which the company says is its largest package handling facility in the world. Hundreds of UPS flights take off daily from Louisville, according to the company.
“This is a UPS town,” said Louisville city council member Betsy Ruhe.
— CNBC’s Dennis Green contributed to this report.
