It's interesting that when this aircraft was mostly in passenger service the catastrophic accidents were rare with the exception of the VHHH accident, and Swissair which I can't blame completely on the airframe as opposed to some after introduction IFE. I think lessons learned from the Swissair accident can be appilied across a wide range of current airliners. American, Delta, and a host of other large airlines operated this aircraft without losing a hull. As soon as it started appearing in the freight role the accidents went up. I have no explanation for this other than possible the freighters were operating at higher weights and thus the margin for error was less. I do know that FedEx had a significant numer of tail strikes early in the MD11 introduction. Why them and not AA or DAL, KLM or Swissair?