I was fortunate in that my senority kept me away from cargoliners except for a two month period where I flew them just to see what it was like and because the schedule was fitting for other plans I had. But.....I treated every take-off as a max gross takeoff no matter what and even then added ten extra knots to everything. Now, this wasn't in an MD-11 [it was a DC-8F], but I'm sure the same thing could be done. My comment is just because there have been a few accidents where an extra ten knots of airspeed would have saved the day. But, we'll have to wait for the final report to see what all the numbers were; runway, GW, etc. Hindsight is so easy.
