Background: An aerial view of the crash site in Louisville, Kentucky (Alex R. White, PLLC). Inset: Matthew Hagan Sweets (Alex R. White, PLLC).
The family members of a father who died in a fiery plane crash in Kentucky are suing the entities they believe are responsible, declaring their loved one was forced to spend his last days on earth in a "living hell."
Matthew Hagan Sweets, 37, died from burns caused by the November 2025 crash of UPS Flight 2976, according to a new 52-page lawsuit. The man's family maintains that Boeing, UPS Air, and others in charge of operations at and around Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport knew about the plane's deficiencies before the catastrophe, but did nothing to fix them.
"This was not an unforeseeable anomaly but an entirely preventable consequence of decades of corporate indifference, willful blindness, and reckless disregard for the value of human life," the introduction of the complaint by attorney filed by Alex R. White reads before zeroing in on the aircraft manufacturer. "Boeing's practices of obfuscation are coming to light. A company's character is not built in a crisis; it's revealed. Once again, the revelation is one of a company putting profits over people."
On Nov. 4, 2025, "a catastrophe unfolded beneath the skies of Louisville," the complaint goes on. At about 5:15 p.m., UPS Air Flight 2976 was taking off from a runway when "a detrimental failure occurred: the left engine and pylon separated from the aircraft's left wing during rotation."
"Consequently, a fire ignited on the now detached engine and the wing where the engine was once attached," the lawsuit states. Just 30 feet above the ground, the MD-11 aircraft "struck the roof of a UPS Supply Chain Solutions warehouse at the southern edge of the airport" and then crashed into a storage yard and two other buildings.
"The combination of approximately 38,000 gallons of jet fuel, the ruptured petroleum storage tanks at Kentucky Petroleum Recycling, and the sustained multi-structure fire produced a massive plume of thick, black smoke that rose nearly one mile into the air above Louisville," the complaint details.
Fifteen people died, many more were injured, entire families were "shattered," and Louisville as a whole was "irrevocably scarred," Sweets' estate states. "The Defendants knew that MD-11s were compromised. They knew, and they flew them anyway. This lawsuit exists because fifteen people paid for that decision with their lives."
At the time of the crash, Sweets was selling scrap materials at a parts and recycling yard, a business neighboring the airport. "His family believed this was to make extra money for Christmas," the attorneys for his estate wrote.
The complaint lays out the harrowing details of the "sudden" events that resulted in the end of Sweets' life.
The crash and subsequent wreckage field of fire reportedly "engulfed" Sweets and covered him "almost entirely with third-degree burns." His clothes were burned off, and his belt "fused to his body."
Sweets was "screaming in agony" as an employee of the auto parts yard saw him emerge "from the inferno." He is said to have been "alive and fully conscious" and cried out in pain while "repeatedly asking for water."
Sweets died two days later "as a result of the horrific injuries he sustained when the wreckage of UPS Flight 2976 showered him in jet fuel and flames," according to his family. "What Matt endured immediately after the crash and in the final days of his life can be described as nothing less than a living hell."
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a preliminary report in January stating there was evidence of "fatigue cracks" in a structural device that connects the engine to the wing of an aircraft, "in addition to areas of overstress failure."
The NTSB noted that this specific aircraft "had accumulated a total time of about 92,992 hours and 21,043 cycles" and that "special detailed inspections" of the connecting components of the aircraft "had not been accomplished" at the proper intervals.
Sweets' estate maintains that Boeing not only knew about the deficiencies in its aircraft but "withheld material information from the operators of the MD-11 and from federal regulators." His family members allege gross negligence on the part of the defendants, and they seek damages for the loss of what Sweets would have been able to provide for his family.
The complaint also alleges wrongful death and a conspiracy "to conceal known structural vulnerabilities in the MD-11" from the Federal Aviation Administration and "to suppress information that would have compelled corrective action" to the components that "posed an imminent risk to the public."
Sweets was a husband and father of two who loved his family "more than life itself," the lawsuit adds. "[H]e wanted nothing more than to graduate" from an electrical contracting trade school "to begin providing more for them. The plane crash stole Matt's dreams just as much as it did his life."