You shouldn't assume ...
Gemini and Lufthansa Cargo operate MD-11 freighters on behalf of DHL. FatEx? Are you quite mad?
Anyway, if the public don't fancy the MD-11, I suppose we could always go back to Diesel 8s. That'll bloody teach them! Fancy that, having operated marginal stage 3 tree-holers for a decade, and having replaced them with compartively noiseless 757s, and having replaced DC-10s and DC-8s, suddenly the NIMBYs start bitching about MD-11s. Well you gimme a break!
One problem is that departures and arrivals into BRU at night are now dictated by political rather than operational requirements. So all sorts of weird and wonderful SIDs and STARs are in place off each and every possible, well almost, runway. Alas, instead of disturbing the same people who's always been disturbed, noise has now been distributed to effect a much larger number of people, including the likes of tgdxb who's suddenly been made to realise he's living next to an airport. Oh dear. Now instead of putting blame where it belongs, namely with politicians for meddling with operations and for failing to properly insulate affected houses (funded by increased take-off fees at night, i.e. DHL, but those funds seems to have disappeared or at least not put to use) the dear politicians with their army of spin controllers immediately get the public swung in every which direction, eventually pointing towards DHL. And people goddamn fall for the old Belgian politio trick of playing Flemmish against Wallons while they wash their hands. Mind numbing.
Yes, our aeroplanes fly at night and aeroplanes make noise. However, in order to pick up a packet in Rome late afternoon and delivering it in London next morning, requires that you do the transporting bit sort of inbetween. Between afternoon and morning is evening and night (I'm doing this slowly so that tgdxb doesn't get lost) and this is when DHL, FedEx, UPS, TNT etc does the transporting bit. Insofar as noone as yet inveted the transmogryffic teleporter, we're sadly being forced to do the transporting bit with existing means. Those means are aeroplanes. To what should have been the great pleasure of Belgium in general and the Brussels area in particular, DHL has enjoyed tremendous growth over the last decade and has developed the BRU Hub into being a major employer. This is supposedly good, as Belgium lost a lot of industry jobs in the same period.
Now we've got new ownership with even bigger plans to slay dragons far and wide, who have merged 2 major and 1 smaller brand into a 170.000 strong workforce and a very large number of billions of Euro's in turnover to make that happen. Part of the plan is an intercontinental superhub and a considerable expansion of the regional network.. That requires transportation and unless someone invents the transmogryffic teleporter, existing means will have to be used. The regional European fleet is planned to grow from 40-odd to 75-odd over the next 6ish years. The number of daily intercontinental flights out of Europe will go from 6ish to 20ish. All that is publicly expressed plans by DPWN. DHL needs to grow and would like to stay in BRU, but the infrastructure will need considerable updating. If, for whatever reason, BRU cannot provide the required platform for growth then DHL will be forced to take it's intercontinental superhub elsewhere, to what will be a rather substantial loss to the Belgian economy.
But tkdxb will be able to sleep a little better at night (unless they plant a TGV line or a motorway in his backyard - you never know) so that's alright. Those 15000 people loosing their jobs are mainly Flemmish speaking anyway, so he could care less.
As luck would have it, I also speak German, and Leipzig should be a charming place the optimists say.