A video circulating on social media—captured and shared via Reddit—appears to show a FedEx McDonnell Douglas MD-11F freighter being taxied by an aircraft maintenance technician (AMT) at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), with the nose gear scrubbing tire rubber during an overly aggressive turn. Details beyond the video itself are sparse, as is often the case with incidents that surface first through crowd-sourced footage rather than official carrier or FAA statements. What is clear from the clip and the practice it depicts is that maintenance personnel at major airlines and cargo carriers are routinely authorized to taxi aircraft under company-specific "maintenance taxi" programs, typically for gate repositioning, hangar moves, or post-maintenance functional checks that don't require a full flight crew. These programs carry their own certification, training, and speed/turn-radius restrictions precisely because the individuals performing them are mechanics, not line pilots, and the margin for error in ground handling a large transport-category aircraft is unforgiving.
The MD-11F is a demanding aircraft to maneuver on the ground. Its trijet configuration, long fuselage, and wide wheelbase mean that nose gear steering inputs at anything beyond taxi speed can generate significant scrub loads on the tires, particularly in tight turns of the type found on LAX's cargo ramps and taxiways near the FedEx facility on the airport's north side. Tire scrubbing—visible as smoke or rubber deposits—occurs when the wheel is forced to slide laterally rather than roll freely through a turn, a function of turning too sharply at too high a taxi speed relative to the aircraft's geometry. While cosmetic tire wear is the most visible outcome, the same dynamics can also impose excessive side loads on the nose landing gear trunnion and steering actuators, potentially triggering a maintenance inspection requirement even if no immediate damage is apparent. For an aircraft type as mechanically mature as the MD-11—no longer in passenger service and flown almost exclusively by FedEx and UPS in freighter configuration—unplanned stress events on landing gear components carry outsized maintenance and dispatch-reliability consequences given the shrinking parts and expertise pool supporting the platform.
For working pilots, particularly those at cargo carriers and fractional/Part 135 operators where maintenance taxi authority is common, the incident is a reminder that ground movement of large aircraft is a full operational task, not an incidental one. Flight crews are trained extensively in taxi technique—managing speed into turns, understanding the offset between cockpit position and main gear track, and respecting the tighter turn radius constraints of long-fuselage aircraft like the MD-11, DC-10, or 777. Maintenance personnel operating under taxi authorizations generally receive abbreviated but formal training on these same principles, and incidents like this one tend to prompt internal review of that training's adequacy, refresher currency requirements, and speed limits published in company ground operations manuals. Airports like LAX add another layer of complexity, with congested ramps, tight radii around cargo stands, and mixed traffic that leaves little room for the kind of oversteering visible in the video.
More broadly, the episode fits into a pattern of ground-handling and non-flight-crew movement incidents gaining visibility through viral video rather than formal incident reporting, which raises questions for both operators and regulators about transparency and reporting culture. As cargo demand keeps MD-11 freighters flying well past their original design life expectations, and as airlines lean on maintenance taxi programs to improve turnaround efficiency and reduce reliance on tugs and tow crews, scrutiny of who is authorized to move these aircraft—and under what conditions—will likely increase. Operators reviewing this footage internally will be looking not just at whether a policy violation occurred, but at whether existing maintenance taxi training adequately prepares technicians for the handling characteristics of legacy widebody types that few pilots outside cargo operations still fly regularly.