Investigation underway: A UPS cargo plane crashed shortly after taking off from the Louisville, Kentucky, airport Tuesday, leaving a fiery trail of destruction and a half- mile-long debris field. At least 12 people have died and others are injured, officials say, warning the death toll could climb as the investigation continues.
Black boxes recovered: An NTSB investigation team is on site at the crash location and has recovered the aircraft’s “black boxes” - the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/ups-plane-crash-louisville-airport?ch=1
Just to be specific as you received tons of answers already.
Yes a modern bi-jet aircraft can takeoff with only one engine (think A320, B7** etc). Provided that there isn’t any other huge issue affecting the performance or the airframe (like a wing on fire).
This MD11 was a tri-jet from another era and it seems that it lost 2 engines out of 3.
And no there are no backup engines, that would be dead weight and engines are very heavy.
That backup is the other engine, their reliability and the fact that an aircraft can still fly without engines (if at altitude of course) and glide to an airport for an emergency landing.
Insane. Thank you for the response