The Decline of the Passenger MD-11

[craig_read 43]

Markus,Absolutely.. you're right.. it is a shame it's regarded in this fashion, I guess it's because the overall programme was stopped before it could really make big money.. and when its place in the market was finally realised it was already a bit of a loss leader as far as sales went and the company decided it was better to just quit now rather than take anymore risks with it.. and of course by this time they'd 'merged' with Boeing and I imagine they pushed their own products so not to split up the Boeing commercial airplane business too much..The MD-11 aircraft in service today.. I absolutely agree with you.. have a very good future.. They'll be around for quite a long time yet, this is why I never understood why people said it was "past it" in these forums.. which just isn't true.. I never regarded it as such.. I think the MD-11 production was a victim of poor management decisions and to some degree optimistic promises which in the end it couldn't keep.. and then finally killed by Boeing really in favour of their own product line probably.. BUT.. great to fly ;)Craig

[mburkhard 23]

Craig,yes I still see this as a big mistake by Boeing (killing MD-11 production that early). It would have sold excellent as a freighter for many years more. It's only now that the B777F is available so in those eight years a lot of MD-11F could have been built.Of course Boeing never admitted they made the wrong decision back then. I fully understand that they wanted to sell the B777 instead for passenger service, but for cargo there was just no alternative until today.Markus

[craig_read 43]

It would have done I think yes.. I'd agree.. Once the potential was realised.. I imagine Boeing were keen to push their own 767 freighter at that point.. it followed the MD-11 but didn't have a comparable capacity.. MD-11 is 80 tonnes and the 767 was around 55 tonnes both with a similar range.. The extra capacity offered by the MD-11 is definitely attractive to operators and this is aparent when looking at the operators today.. (all cargo really)..I imagine that Boeing wanted MD's military capabilities a little more than their commerical aircraft business... and that's why the MD-11 project was neglected..It's really interesting having this discussion about it though.. always good to hear points of view and correct some assumptions I'd made :)Thanks Craig

[Mace 1,902]

Yes I think Boeing did not want to continue building a McDonnell-Douglas aircraft. They preferred to build and promote their own. Look at the 717 programme, too.RhettFS box: E8500 (@ 3.80 ghz), AC Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3 Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600 Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate 64ASX Client: AMD 3700+ (@ 2.6 ghz), 7800GT

[Allan Burek 3]

>Yes I think Boeing did not want to continue building a>McDonnell-Douglas aircraft. They preferred to build and>promote their own. Look at the 717 programme, too.>>Rhett>>FS box: E8500 (@ 3.80 ghz), AC Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3>Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600>Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm>Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate>64>ASX Client: AMD 3700+ (@ 2.6 ghz), 7800GTThe 717 is actually the smaller version of the conversions done to create the MD-10. Same avionics and everything. As for the 777F, it does not have something that distictively places it above the MD-11. An engine on the tail. For those who are unfamiliar, it is a pain in the butt to get up there, and if you have to change it, its nearly impossible at a place where it isnt done all the time. Here are some pics of a DC-10, but you get the point:

[Guest captnmel66]

Craig,how was the concorde a disaster? I'm just curious because I know only of the one that crashed in paris. According to a BA Ops agent in JFK back in 1996 or 1997 he said the thing never made them any money! but then again we have airlines who operate for years and never make money!!! as for the ill fated air france concorde I think if we dig into that we will find they took off over weight for the conditions. they had a tail wind that I hear exceeded most tail wind components for Jet aircraft (10kts). so if you are taking off at max allowable for zero wind and then throw in a tail wind you would not believe the amount of performance that can kill for you. then you have the flight engineer shut down an engine on you that doesnt need to be shut down, number 1 was good, number 2 was not, throw in the fact your hydraulics were wiped out and you cant get the gear (gobs of drag) up you are royally screwed. that delta wing became a big speed brake and they could never overcome the obstacles (lack of power and performance) in their way to save their lives. PSS had a concorde for sale before they shut down their web site that is pretty cool to fly. it has some things modeled in it that I had seen when I got a tour of the cockpit in JFK one of the times I parked next to her. hard to believe she was years ahead of her time and flew as many years as she did.

[Shmiffy 0]

I Think Craig was pointing towards the fact that commercially, concorde was a disaster.Considering that at launch, there was something like 70 airlines interested in her, however by the first flight, it was only BA and Air France. who were ultimately, given the aircraft, to all intents and purposes.CheersPaul

[Fry777 10]

>Speaking as an ex MD-11 mechanic, the cause of it's demise as>a passenger plane was the fuel burn issues caused by the>engines not the airplaneExactly. Craig, you ommited the major reason for the MD-11 failure : the underperformance of the engines delivered.MD did count on these engines, like every manufacturer, in the performance calculations. But it appeared that they burned more fuel than expected, thus reducing the MD-11 range.No one can tell that the MD-11 was a bad concept initially, just look at the order book before these problems were discovered, with airlines like American, Swissair, KLM, Singapore Airlines committed to it...If these engines would have been ok, we would have seen a bunch of MD-11 in SIA colors. The order cancellation from SIA was completely related to the engine performance problem, and a key loss for the program. The fact that some of the most successful airlines ordered it back in the days is a proof that the concept was very attractive :)By the way, the AA flight 191 DC-10 accident, even if it was awful, didn't have a role in this : American were among the first to order the MD-11.And the main design problem of the DC-10, the 3 hydraulic lines running at the same point near engine n

[Guest Debosonic]

Thanks for your replys guys - very informative..

[Guest hmstiger]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Fed Ex invested a lot of money installing the MD-11 cockpit systems in their legacy DC10s? Cutting out a crew member saves bucks...Colin WarePortland

[Guest hmstiger]

This is the reason I'm glad that this project wasn't a 757 - the proceedures are the same as the 767, with somewhat different flight dynamics. And we already have a good 767 on the market.Somethign totally new is more interesting to me. Colin WarePortland

[Mace 1,902]

Wow, a person has to climb up that little ladder to get up there from the inside! I bet that can get interesting. I wonder what the engine hoist is like for that. They must have to pull it up to the side, somehow avoiding the tail, then finesse it out of there. ??RhettFS box: E8500 (@ 3.80 ghz), AC Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3 Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600 Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate 64ASX Client: AMD 3700+ (@ 2.6 ghz), 7800GT

[Guest DeltaSimTek]

XM DUDE said it right. As a former McDonnell Douglas employee myself (MD-11 Sim Tech in Long Beach) I also saw first hand what was going on. Our then CEO, Harry Stonecipher, had his eyes set on bigger goals and let the company slip under with the promise of the CEOs position at Boeing when they took over. This fact isn

[craig_read 43]

Captmel,Yes.. exactly as Paul said.. Concorde was an absolute commercial disaster.. No one ended up buying it in the end, the aircraft were given away.. As a consequence of so few in serivce the costs involved in servicing and operating the Concorde 'fleet' were huge.. Think about it.. with only.. 14.. in existence, not many suppliers would commit to mass manufacture of spares etc, as a consequence of this spares are expensive as more often than not they have to be custom manufactured. If the aircraft had been mass manufactured, so would the spares and with economies of scale operating costs etc would have reduced making it more viable.There are many more reasons.. but with 14 in serivce from a massively expensive development programme, Concorde as a whole never made any money for the manufacturer, and arugably only probably made money for the airlines because they got them for free (not counting other benefits which I will come to).Concorde was used more as a flagship for British Airways and Air France.. operated for many years to boost the airlines standing in the public eye.. "They must be good, they fly Concorde!"... etc.. Concorde was the aircraft equivalent of a celebrity, and that was worth a lot to Airlines.. people bought tickets simply because of the prestige associated with an airline that operated the fastest passenger aircraft in the world... People went to airshows to see it... sat at the viewing areas hoping to catch a glimpse of it.. the merchandising must have been massive.. Concorde was and still is a symbol.. of the airlines excellence.. BA and AF made their money here.. much more than the actual money it made from service on its own... It's worth flying a loss-leader around if it boosts your revenues significantly in other areas.. They refused to hand the aircraft over after potential bidders wanted to take Concorde and continue its active service... Of course they wouldn't want that! They lose their exclusivity, another airline would capture and cash in on the "excellence" of Concorde.. much better to keep them... or donate them to museums so they will still be painted in the airlines own livery... (advertising)..I'm not sure we'll see another supersonic passenger aircraft in the next 50 years now.. Boeing toyed with the idea with the sonic cruiser, but that seemed more like a publicity stunt to guage market reaction to the concept than anything serious... "Let's put this out, see who bites.. and if there is a lot of interest then worry about it.." was the idea.. The Dreamliner was the same, the first images circulated of the Dreamliner were dubious.. Engineers at Airbus looked at it and said it wasn't a 'real airplane' more of a concept that guaged market interest. Only after a significant amount of interest did Boeing actually sit down with its engineers and say 'ok chaps.. loads of interest.. what can we actaully make here?'Hope I explained myself :)Craig

[Avantime 81]

One has to remember that the A340 was simply an A330 with 2 more engines, developed at minimal cost to Airbus. It performed quite well considering that it held quite a large market share amongst airlines which need a ultra long-haul aircraft but can't fill a 744. Also the Airbus CCQ greatly lowered pilot training costs, when compared to the MD-11 which required a new type rating. It was the 777 ERs which initiated the decline of the A340 program.The MD-11 was much more important to MD because the company was descending into oblivion and they needed a best-seller. Unfortunately it wasn't due of the shortcomings as described above, so in a way the MD-11's lack of sales success sank the company.By the time Boeing purchased MD there were no real market for those ex-MD aircraft (the pax MD-11 and 717 sales were only a tiny fraction of 777/737NG sales) and along with the fact that cargo airlines rarely buy new aircraft means that there was little incentive to keep the production lines open. I expect Boeing to close Long Beach completely once the C-17 orders are fulfilled.