Delta Air Lines MD-11 Landing

[MrPlaneDriver 41]

Another factor was just the times changing too fast for the old DC10 platform to keep up... as ETOPS has evolved, the need for the third engine has disappeared allowing the 767, 777, and A330 to take over the majority of the widebody workload.

A question I've always been thinking about: which factors lead to the "extintion" of tri-jet aircrafts? I mean, since the Tri-Star and the 727, they became very popular, but why the manufacturers and airlines decided to abandon the tri-jets?

[JD396 38]

A question I've always been thinking about: which factors lead to the "extintion" of tri-jet aircrafts? I mean, since the Tri-Star and the 727, they became very popular, but why the manufacturers and airlines decided to abandon the tri-jets?

I'd like someone who knows what they're talking about to answer that one because I've wondered the same thing.I could be all wet but I don't think there's necessarily anything inherent to the tri-jet design that drove them to extinction... it seems to me as much as anything that if engineers can design a good enough twin-jet to do the job, why bother adding a third engine in the tail? First off it has to simplify things for the mechanics that have to work on them. The third engine obviously provides more thrust, allowing additional payload, but with that comes additional fuel burn. Judging from the way twin-engine widebodies have sold, it would certainly seem that it's better to increase payload by attaching better engines rather than more of them.I tend to think what killed the MD-11 was as much the Boeing merger as anything else... the 777-200ER and the MD-11ER are very similar in specs, and I don't expect Boeing would feel any need to compete against their own new bestseller. I've also read that, with a typical passenger load, an MD-11 isn't quite as fuel efficient in practice as it is on paper, and that it takes loading it close to capacity as a freighter to be a moneymaker.The 727 just got old around the same time as the original 737... and they decided to upgrade the 737 with the 300/400/500 variants around the time Douglas came up with the MD-80. I imagine they decided that the base 737 design was just a bit simpler than the 727 and would be easier to upgrade. I've read that the similarly tail-engined MD-80 is somewhat unstable in turbulent winds when compared to an under-wing jet like the 737, and I imagine the 727 would have similar characteristics.Anyway, I'm just winging it here... anyone who knows better is welcome to set the record straight :)

[777flyer101 1]

My specs are: AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 4.09GHz, MSi 870A Fuzion (motherboard), MSi R6950 Twin Frozr II (GPU), 8GB DDR3 I also use the McPhat HD textures for the MD-11 and they have upcoming ones for the 747http://www.mcphatstudios.net/Upcoming McPhat Ultra Hi-Def textures:

I never heard of McPhat studios but after seeing these pictures I am amazed, coming to them

[Danielsen 14]

I emphatically recommend the MD-11 to anyone... It never caught on in the real world so of course the interest level isn't going to be as high as the more common widebodies it was supposed to be competing with. But it's a great simulation and beyond that, I think a really intuitive and easy aircraft to fly.

Even though I don't own a copy of the MD-11 I do believe it's a top notch simulation, and easy to fly. After all, it's PMDG

There was some sarcasm when I said I shouldn't say that I don't have it because people would say get it anyway. I'll probably retire the -400X when the T7 is released also.

Right, sarcasm! It's also about personal preferences. I do think it's a beautiful airplane, but I like to fly as realistic as possible when I fly online and I could only see myself flying the Lufthansa Cargo version which isn't that many different.. I also don't own the JS41 because I'm much more into jets. But then again, it has to be fantastic and in-depth on how to fly a turboprop. It's PMDG! I consider myself a PMDG fan too, but you don't need to own all the products to be. However I do own the 747 for both FS9 and FSX on CD and the 737NG and soon the NGX.And Peter. It's a wonderful video.. Great scenery, great graphics, great approach. Love you last second corrections, and dead on centerline!

[Paul_Smith 92]

To all you who claim to be serious simmers or PMDG a really excited user but still don't have the MD-11, get it now. It is a generation ahead of the 747 both as an aircraft and as a simulation. Until the NGX comes out, it remains the finest tubeliner sim on the market by quite some margin. You guys just do not know what you are missing.

[Kevin666 2]

My most recent video, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMHZtyclr8w

The voice of the CAWS is freaking annoying.

[pcubine 143]

The voice of the CAWS is freaking annoying.

Yes, I agree with you. Too much confusion with the constant "autopilot". Should have pressed Z again to silence it. I would have probably flinched at the first "too low terrain", jerked the joystick and made a mess of the landing if not a crash landing. Good video, Peter.Michael Cubine

[4116705510 4]

To all you who claim to be serious simmers or PMDG a really excited user but still don't have the MD-11, get it now. It is a generation ahead of the 747 both as an aircraft and as a simulation. Until the NGX comes out, it remains the finest tubeliner sim on the market by quite some margin. You guys just do not know what you are missing.

Yes, as a simulation its much ahead of the 747. However as a real-world aircraft, its not. The Boeing 747-400 came about in 1988, with service beginning in 1989. It was the first aircraft in the world to feature an all-glass cockpit. The MD-11 came about in 1990, it too had a glass cockpit, but the 747-400 has more advanced aerodynamics, and is a much larger plane. The MD-11's wing design was almost too old for the plane, the 747-400's wasn't as much of a 'hot wing' I was also using FSRecorder, so I could concentrate on the flying of the aircraft itself, and then concentrate on the filming when I replayed it. The throttles were jerking around too much for me to get my mouse on the auto throttle override. It also seems as if this simulations doesn't automatically disconnect auto throttles when you get to 50ft above the ground, like it should. I'd also like to mention why trijets have gone extinct. The Boeing 777 came around in 1994, it could fly higher, faster, and burn less fuel than the MD-11 (its main competitor). With this, they needed to create massive twin engines, powerful enough to power such a large aircraft. Now, the trijet platform it almost pointless now. You would never need to make an MD-11 or L-1011 anymore, because you can build two engines powerful enough to eliminate the third. Same with a 727-like aircraft. It reduces the complexity and cost of the third engine, you can get powerful enough engines to run on two, and it burns less fuel, regardless of how efficient your three are. The four-engine platform will stay though. An aircraft as big as a 747 or A380 would never be built with two engines, its too big, and it needs to be able to traverse oceans without ETOPS limitations. Plus, with the four-engine layout, if you lose an engine, you keep 75% of your power, instead of 50% in a twin, and when your plane weighs around 1 Million pounds, you'd like to have that extra thrust. The 777-300 and A350-1000 will be the largest twinjets, and anything bigger will have four. Three is pointless now. Three engines is more efficient than four, but was needed, since you didn't have big enough engines to power an L-1011 or 727 on two at that time. However, the Dassault Falcon 7X still has three, but its fly-by-wire, and they want the extra safety, since it flies farther than most jets.

[Cirrus22 9]

It was the first aircraft in the world to feature an all-glass cockpit.

Aside from the A320 which first flew in 1987.It's fascinating to look back at old flightglobal issues from 1990 when they 'flight tested' the MD-11 and wrote a pretty large article on it. They had great things to say about the flight deck design, likewise for the 744.

[4116705510 4]

Oh yes, its the first fly-by-pilot aircraft with a glass cockpit.

Anyway, I'm just winging it here... anyone who knows better is welcome to set the record straight :)

My father flew the 727 for Delta, and he said it was a pilots aircraft. It was stable and weighted, performed well in turbulence and was an all-around great plane. He also was captain of the DC-9 and 737 at one point. He said the 737-200/300 (only ones he flew) were very feathery and bounced around in turbulence worse than anything at that time (he says it’s no worse than a 'modern' A320 though!) and didn't like it as much. The DC-9 was good too he says, but it didn't perform as well in turbulence. His only beef with the 727, was a victim of its t-tail configuration, which made it lose some authority on control for landing as it got slow, and required massive trimming to land. He does say however, that the 757 is a far superior aircraft than the 737 series was. Not to drag on the 737NGs, but the 737 platform is an inferior one compared to the 757 or A320, since the latter two are higher up, and don't require squished nacelles. The 757's cockpit arrangment was much better; the entire nose redesigned to be more aerodyanmic and the old nose design was very, very cold on cold days, the 757 isn't. Boeing was too cheap to change this nose/cockpit area config. However, I do say the NG's inherint design is now superior to the A320 series, since the NG is much better in turbulence and has more advanced stuff; I think they should have made a smaller 757 and kept that line, instead of having the 737-800 and -900ER< personal thought.

[JD396 38]

My father flew the 727 for Delta, and he said it was a pilots aircraft. It was stable and weighted, performed well in turbulence and was an all-around great plane. He also was captain of the DC-9 and 737 at one point. He said the 737-200/300 (only ones he flew) were very feathery and bounced around in turbulence worse than anything at that time (he says it’s no worse than a 'modern' A320 though!) and didn't like it as much. The DC-9 was good too he says, but it didn't perform as well in turbulence. His only beef with the 727, was a victim of its t-tail configuration, which made it lose some authority on control for landing as it got slow, and required massive trimming to land. He does say however, that the 757 is a far superior aircraft than the 737 series was. Not to drag on the 737NGs, but the 737 platform is an inferior one compared to the 757 or A320, since the latter two are higher up, and don't require squished nacelles. The 757's cockpit arrangment was much better; the entire nose redesigned to be more aerodyanmic and the old nose design was very, very cold on cold days, the 757 isn't. Boeing was too cheap to change this nose/cockpit area config. However, I do say the NG's inherint design is now superior to the A320 series, since the NG is much better in turbulence and has more advanced stuff; I think they should have made a smaller 757 and kept that line, instead of having the 737-800 and -900ER< personal thought.

I can't find it now for the life of me but what I had read was an AA captain comparing the MD-80 to the 738 (which sounds like it's steady as a tank)... and it seems like you were saying about the 727, that the T-tail design can be a bit hard to manage on an approach in inclement weather. It seems that when the 1980s rolled around and it was time to make some changes to the product line, part of what prevented the 727 from getting upgrades to modernity was the third engine. You can put high-bypass engines on a T-tail like the MD-90, but the whole back end of the 727 is built around the S-duct for the JT8D and it really wouldn't work.And, as you mentioned in your post I didn't quote above, the more powerful and efficient high-bypass engines made the third engine obsolete anyway. It relegates the MD-11 mostly to cargo these days where supposedly its ultra-wide body lets it load more of its max payload, making it more efficient than the 747 freighter in some applications... as the 747 will usually bulk out long before its max payload. For the Dassault Falcon... it's not marketed towards airlines trying to run revenue flights and earn a profit, but towards the "corporate jet" and charter market where the customers will pretty much cover operating expenses before the jet leaves the FBO. A marginal difference in cost when compared to say, a G-IV or some other similar aircraft won't kill the operator... the costs can be directly passed on to the customer on a day-to-day basis... whereas an airline that runs jets on revenue flights 24/7/365 will get hit hard if something costs an extra few dollars per hour to operate.I think you're right on the 757... what killed it was just the "commonality" thing... the 737-900ER completes the NG family so it finally can reach the passenger capacity of the 757, but like the A321 it still doesn't match the range of the 757. The 900ER competes directly with the 321, and thus gives the NG family a match for the whole 320 family. But neither of those can replace the 757 on the lower demand transcontinental flights which are sometimes as long as 4500 nmi. However, somewhere along the way, Boeing must have decided that the common type rating like the 320 family would be worth more than keeping the 757 around. Here in the US, the 320 and NG family have more than enough range to fly the domestic routes, and with no competitor on the long haul niche routes they must have thought it was safe to leave that market altogether. The 757s are going to start reaching retirement age soon enough and as of right now there isn't a replacement out there without going to a heavy. Evidently the "797" will be revealed soon and that's supposed to replace both the NG family and the 757, but it'll probably be quite a while before that finally comes to fruition.

[nickbrazel 0]

Nice vidCan I give you a tip? If you hit the Z key on the keyboard it will disable the autopilot - hit it again and it will disable the "AUTOPILOT...AUTOPILOT" warning sound without having to mess with the AFDS disconnect controls of the MCPNick

[4116705510 4]

Only the earliest 757s are nearing retirement, but their built well, an one of Boeing's best airliners ever, they'll stick around. I'm sure Delta will make sure of that, then again, 159 isn't much of an investment into 757s is it?

[JD396 38]

Only the earliest 757s are nearing retirement, but their built well, an one of Boeing's best airliners ever, they'll stick around. I'm sure Delta will make sure of that, then again, 159 isn't much of an investment into 757s is it?

Yeah, Delta flies loads of them, and the rest of the legacy carriers except US Airways (somewhere in purgatory between "legacy" and "low cost" if you ask me) have enough of them and use them such that they couldn't jump ship and straight-up replace them with the 739ER or 321, or heavies. Long live the 757 as fas as I'm concerned... it and the DC-10 have always been two of my favorite aircraft. There's a reason the Captain Sim 757 was the first payware addon I bought... Looks pretty good in McPhat's Delta colors...I don't see as many 757s here at MSP as back in the "old" days before the NW merger. They used to be a common sight because of the maintenance base here but that started to wither away even before the merger. Most of the DL flights here use the 320 or MD90 these days. Sometimes it hardly feels like a hub here anymore.

[DylanC 181]

The voice of the CAWS is freaking annoying.

LOL! I was thinking the same thing. Sounds like the voice of the computer from Star Trek.