Yet they’ve had a couple of big plane crashes in recent years.
Major incidents and accidents
September 11, 1998: Flight 744, N316UP, a Boeing 767–300, suffered substantial damage after running off the runway at Ellington Field from Louisville International Airport. The airport was experiencing a major storm at the time of the landing, and the aircraft was unable to stop on a wet runway with a strong tailwind. After running off the runway, the aircraft's right landing gear broke off and the right engine separated from the wing. The aircraft was put back into service after major repairs.[16]
June 7, 2005: Flight 6971, N250UP, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, suffered substantial damage after a landing gear collapse at Louisville International Airport from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. The crew accidentally lowered the nose of the aircraft too quickly, buckling the front landing gear. The aircraft was put back into service after a $10 million repair.[17]
February 7, 2006: Flight 1307, N748UP, a Douglas DC-8, was destroyed by fire at Philadelphia International Airport from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Just before landing the crew reported a smoke detector activated in the cargo hold. After landing, the cargo hold of the aircraft caught fire. The source of the fire was never found.[18]
September 3, 2010: Flight 6,[19] N571UP, a Boeing 747-400F, crashed near the Dubai Silicon Oasis at approximately 7:45pm local time after declaring an emergency fifty minutes after takeoff. Both crew members were killed, the first such casualties in UPS' history.[20] On 6 November 2010 Agence France-Presse released the Arabic Al-Qaeda statement that the crash was due to on-board explosion of an air package collected in Yemen, to date this has not been proven.[21]
August 14, 2013: Flight 1354,[22] N155UP, an Airbus A300-600, crashed in an open field on approach to Birmingham–Shuttlesworth International Airport in Birmingham, Alabama killing both the pilot and co-pilot.