After November Crash, UPS Sends All Of Its Ancient MD-11 Planes Into Not-So-Early Retirement

After the horrific crash of a 34-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-11 flown by UPS in November, the shipping giant has taken the reasonable step of sending all its MD-11s into permanent retirement. These elderly aircraft were already slated to be pulled out of the air in the next few years anyway; it's now obvious that they should have been pulled already. UPS will take a $137 million hit in the process.

The loss will put a strain on UPS's operations, as MD-11s accounted for 9% of the company's air fleet, according to NBC News. The world is also facing a dire shortage of cargo planes in general, as planemakers like Boeing and Airbus prioritize passenger airliners over freighters in their production schedules. In fact, that production squeeze is a big part of the reason why more and more cargo companies are keeping their planes in the air long past the typical retirement age of 25 years. That continues to be a risk, and the devastating consequences are now clear.

Meanwhile, FedEx is claiming for the moment that it will patch up its MD-11s and get them back into the air once the FAA lifts its post-crash grounding order. According to Simple Flying, FedEx has 58 such planes in its fleet; Western Global Airlines has a further 14. Every MD-11 is a grizzled ancient, originally made by a company that was long ago acquired by Boeing. Now that UPS has made its move, expect there to be pressure on these companies to follow suit.

Hopefully, UPS won't be operating with a reduced fleet for long. It ought to be getting 18 Boeing 767 freighters in the next 15 months. Though this is a decades-old model, the actual planes will be fresh out of the factory. But Boeing has over 5,000 planes on backorder, many of which are passenger airliners, which are also badly needed to replace aging planes. Demand for air services is just surging past production capacity, and this situation looks like it's getting worse, not better.