Well, I can well remember landing on 23 at Heathrow in 1984 when I was flying the DC-10-30 and if it had been "only 6,500 feet" that might have got my attention. As it was, it was a complete non-event.
Incidentally, when I was flying DC-10s for Fred, I met one of my old RAF co-pilots overhead Gander one night. I was en route from LAX to LGW and he was flying a VC-10 from IAD to BZZ. He had 139 passengers on board and I had 345 plus 10 tons of freight under the floor. He was burning just a little bit more fuel than I was (somewhere around 18,000 lbs per hour).
There is no doubt that the VC-10 was a wonderful bit of kit but it was very hard to make it a commercial success.