From Muduckace, reply #242:
I have been with 3 MD-11 air carriers, I have held several positions, not a pilot but spent more than four years as a Maintenance Rep. or Flight Mechanic. Plenty of time to discuss with pilots and observe the aircraft charartistics.
To answer your question, the MD-11 was a reliability nightmare as it was cutting edge technology when first delivered. It had tons of "nuisance" pireps that did not have the support from MDC and especially Boeing to iron out all the issues in time. Boeing baught MDC to shut the MD-11 down to sell B-777's. Especially after the lack of tech support the guys on the line lost alot of support to resolve these issues.
EG: The fly by wire aircraft required constant monitoring of systems for given feedback (voltage and discrete) thresholds to log a failure. This was uncharted territory and as minimal faults generated by fault monotoring systems logged failures that were not actually significant but still out of design spec. It became a hard aircraft to maintain. Especially for PAX airlines who were operating many more aircraft that were not like it at all.
Fedex has been operating the aircraft for years and were able to apply the "nuts and bolts" approach to understand the aircraft better as they had been operating DC-10's for years as their "meat and potatoes" of heavy long haul aircraft.
I started out with an ACMI outfit that allowed me to work with DC-10's and MD-11's exclusively. This was great because the maintenance and flight crews could gain a better understanding of the aircraft. Flight crews became knowledgable of nuisance faults and maintenance could work better with them to resolve the issues for better reliability.
As my username implies, I also used to work on MD-11 freighters in maintenance for several years (not anymore since 4 years, because I changed jobs). In fact I'm holding an EASA Part 66 B1 licence on this type (among other types).
The MD-11 was the first aircraft for me where I really knew my stuff and even memorized the LAMS schematics.
A lot of colleagues hated the MD-11, but I have to say that they approached the work with a Boeing or Airbus mindset. The MD-11 IS different,it has different design philosophies (in fact, IMO the MD-11 rather resembles a big Cessna than an Airbus or a Boeing, and so far I have worked on products of all three big Western aircraft manufacturers). If you treat the aircraft as a Douglas and not as a Boeing or Airbus, and do the mainenace it requires, it isn't a maintenance hog at all. Our airline had some trouble because they bought a bunch of second hand aircraft from at the time bankrupt Varig and VASP and you could see that for the last years these airlines had been scrounging on maintenance and performed sloppy work. On the other hand the MD-11s we received from JAL were all in very good condition and rarely gave trouble.
For me the MD-11 seemed to be very straight forward and simple in design.
Talking to MD-11 pilots, sure, the plane seemed to have some quirks, but most of them loved to fly this plane.
I just hope that my current employer signs a maintenance contract with one of the many MD-11 operators which frequent our airport, do that I can get my hands back on one.