I put it that since pilots seem to be able to fly all other jetliners day in and day out without committing these same errors, either the MD-11 is much more difficult to fly than any other jetliner, or it attracts far more than its share of incompetent pilots. I think the former is far more likely.
Yes and no, depends on which angle you choose to view it from.
When the MD-11 was first introduced, the pilots that flew her generally came from years operating steam cockpits, DC-8, DC-10, all the earlier Boeing products, 70, 72, 73, and 74 classic, aircraft that demanded well rounded flying and handling skills. It was a given; if you had trouble flying an airplane to standard, you had no business being on the flight deck.
Enter the Airbus family of products, designed to engineer the weakest link out of the system, the pilot. The follow on products from Seattle have had pretty much the same idea in mind, lots of industry concern these last years of degrading piloting skills due over reliance on automation.
So, yes, there is an ever-growing group of pilots not competent enough to handle the MD-11, those who have cut their aviation teeth in a glass/automation environment. This is not meant as a criticism, merely a fact of life, these very same pilots are competent in the aircraft they currently fly. Not surprisingly, typing eighty words a minute is a required flying skill these days.
Where this argument is concerned, the MD-11, although a glass machine with significant computer enhancement, does not have the extensive automated flight envelope protections of the more modern airliners. In other words, she still requires the exacting handling and airmanship skills of the earlier jets.
What is surprising here, these pilots were old-school, and very experienced with the machine.