Major update on deadly Louisville plane crash as black box recovered

The black box from a UPS plane that crashed earlier this week has been recovered. Investigators made the discovery on Wednesday while combing through the debris to determine exactly what led to the deadly incident, which claimed the lives of 12 people.

At the site crash, located near Muhammad Ali International Airport, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) uncovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, normally referred to as the black box. While it suffered some heat damage, the black box is still expected to be able to provide key pieces of information to investigators, the NTSB spokesman said.

Todd Inman said: "We feel comfortable that once we get these to our lab in DC that we will be able to get a good readout of the applicable data. That will be yet another point of information that will really help us understand what happened."

This comes as investigators said they spotted in footage on the crash one of the engines of the aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, detaching from its left wing.

The plane erupted into a fireball shortly after taking off on Tuesday. The inferno consumed the enormous plane and spread to nearby businesses, killing at least 12 people, including a child, and leaving little hope of finding survivors in the charred area of the crash at UPS Worldport, the company's global aviation hub.

The plane with three people aboard had been cleared for takeoff when a large fire developed in the left wing, said Mr Inman. But determining why it caught fire and the engine fell off could take investigators more than a year.